OpenAI Launches ‘Daybreak’ to Help Build Secure By Design Software

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/openai-daybreak-secure-by-design/

Publish Date: 2026-05-12 11:15:00

Source Domain: www.infosecurity-magazine.com

OpenAI has announced Daybreak, a new initiative based on its frontier large language models (LLMs) and its AI-coding assistant, Codex, to help developers build secure software from the ground up.

Unveiled on May 12, OpenAI said Daybreak builds from its Trusted Access for Cyber (TAC) program, a scheme that reserves access to certain frontier models to a selective number of organizations.

The initiative already includes three of OpenAI’s latest models: the general-purpose version of GPT‑5.5; GPT‑5.5 with TAC, which offers more precise safeguards for verified defensive work in authorized environments; and GPT‑5.5‑Cyber. It also features Codex Security, a code‑review assistant based on Codex that is currently available only as a research preview.

Where the TAC program is primarily focused on vetted users tapping into LLMs to identify and fix vulnerabilities, Daybreak aims to tackle the vulnerability problem from the start of the software development lifecycle.

Speaking to Infosecurity, Willie Tejada, SVP & GM of Cloud Native Security Fabric at Aviatrix, explained that OpenAI’s press release is intentionally broad because Daybreak is “a platform play, not a model announcement.”

He said the initiative aims to help cyber defenders do three things: build an editable threat model of a given code repository focused on realistic attack paths, discover and test vulnerabilities in an isolated environment and propose and validate patches directly in the repo.

“The pitch is that it compresses hours of manual security analysis into minutes,” Tejada added.

In a series of short videos posted on social media, OpenAI shared some of the tasks that software developers and cybersecurity defenders can perform as part of the initiative. These include:

Scanning a codebase using Codex Security’s 10 subagents, identifying vulnerabilities, fixing them and adding regression tests
Triaging vulnerability backlog, prioritizing vulnerabilities that should be fixed…

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