Forget the model. When it comes to cybersecurity, it's all about the harness
AI-enabled hacking is a growing threat, but the focus should shift from frontier AI models to the 'harness'—tools that adapt general-purpose LLMs for specific cybersecurity tasks. Cato Networks' research demonstrates the power of such harnesses by testing autonomous hacking agents.
As AI-enabled hacking becomes a bigger threat for cybersecurity and national security, public attention has focused on mainly a few leading frontier AI companies developing more powerful large language models.
These models, and the billions of dollars behind them matter, but they’re only part of a larger shift. Enterprises are now building their own technology platforms that take these general-purpose LLMs and turn them into bespoke cybersecurity tools.
Industry professionals refer to these tools as a “harness.” They control the model’s behavior, limit its risks, and connect it to internal IT systems and networks so it can work reliably at scale.
New research from Cato Networks shared exclusively with CyberScoop shows how much power can come from a harness. It paired OpenAI’s ChatGPT 5.5 and GPT 5.5-Cyber models with its own tool and tested the abilities of the agent to hack into a victim network with as little human direction as possible.
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