Tenable joins OpenAI Daybreak Cyber Partner Program to advance AI-powered exposure management

As artificial intelligence reshapes both cyber defence and cyberattacks, security vendors are increasingly looking to combine advanced AI capabilities with security operations. Tenable has announced that it is working with OpenAI under the OpenAI Daybreak Cyber Partner Program, a move aimed at helping organisations identify, prioritise and reduce cyber risk more effectively as attack surfaces continue to expand.

The collaboration brings together OpenAI's frontier AI capabilities, including GPT-5.5, with Tenable's exposure management platform. Rather than focusing on generating more security alerts, the initiative is designed to improve how organisations understand cyber risk, prioritise remediation efforts and accelerate defensive workflows across modern enterprise environments.

AI is changing how cyber risk is managed

The announcement comes at a time when attackers are increasingly using artificial intelligence to accelerate reconnaissance, automate vulnerability discovery and shorten the time between identifying an exposure and exploiting it.

This changing threat landscape is creating a growing imbalance for security teams. Organisations are dealing with a larger number of potential exposures across increasingly distributed environments, while security teams have less time to assess and respond before attackers move.

According to Tenable, traditional reactive approaches are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain as AI accelerates the pace of attacks. The company believes security teams need greater automation, context and intelligence to focus on the risks that have the greatest business impact.

Exposure management remains central to the strategy

At the centre of the collaboration is the Tenable One Exposure Management Platform, which is designed to help organisations distinguish between vulnerabilities that exist and exposures that represent genuine business risk.

The platform uses the Tenable Exposure Data Fabric to connect exposure intelligence across multiple parts of the attack surface. By combining this data with additional business context, the platform helps security teams understand which issues require immediate attention rather than simply producing more findings.

The integration of GPT-5.5 is expected to build on this foundation by helping security teams move more quickly from analysis to action, allowing organisations to prioritise remediation efforts before attackers exploit critical weaknesses.

Collaboration will focus on AI-driven cyber defence

Under the OpenAI Daybreak Cyber Partner Program, Tenable expects the collaboration to focus on several key areas that support modern cyber defence.

These include advancing cybersecurity research and exposure intelligence, accelerating the identification and prioritisation of exploitable attack paths, improving how security teams validate and respond to high-risk exposures, and streamlining security operations to reduce cyber risk more efficiently.

The objective is to use frontier AI capabilities to improve defensive workflows rather than simply increasing the volume of security analysis.

AI-powered workflows aim to improve security operations

Eric Doerr, Chief Product Officer at Tenable, said the rapid evolution of AI requires a different approach to cybersecurity.

"The AI era requires a fundamentally new approach to cybersecurity. Attackers are moving faster and operating at a scale that makes purely reactive security untenable."

He added that, through OpenAI's Trusted Access for Cyber programme, Tenable is evaluating how GPT-5.5 can accelerate defensive workflows through secure product integrations.

"This is what proactive security looks like in practice."

According to Tenable, combining exposure intelligence with frontier AI capabilities is intended to help customers respond more quickly while maintaining confidence in their security decisions.

Continued investment in AI-powered exposure management

The collaboration also reflects Tenable's broader investment in AI-powered exposure management as organisations continue to navigate increasingly complex cyber environments.

Rather than treating AI as a standalone capability, the company is positioning it alongside exposure intelligence, governance and security operations to help organisations proactively reduce cyber risk.

As AI adoption continues to reshape enterprise security, the emphasis is increasingly shifting towards improving context, prioritisation and decision-making, allowing security teams to focus on the exposures that are most likely to affect business operations.

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