CrowdStrike has unveiled a new artificial intelligence-powered cybersecurity capability designed to simulate real-world cyberattacks, identify exploitable security weaknesses and help organisations strengthen their defences before attackers can exploit them.
Announced on 4 November 2026 at Fal.Con Europe in Barcelona, Agentic Adversary Emulation is powered by CrowdStrike SafeMind, the company’s family of purpose-built security AI models and supporting technologies. Integrated into the CrowdStrike Falcon platform, the new capability uses autonomous AI to replicate attacker behaviour, identify potential routes into critical systems and assess whether security improvements have successfully closed those routes. The development is intended to help organisations move beyond traditional vulnerability assessments towards a more continuous approach to identifying and addressing cybersecurity risks.
Using AI to simulate real-world cyberattacks
As cybercriminals increasingly adopt AI-powered tools, organisations face growing challenges in identifying and responding to complex attacks. CrowdStrike’s Agentic Adversary Emulation is designed to reproduce how sophisticated attackers combine vulnerabilities, configuration weaknesses and identity security gaps to gain access to sensitive systems. Rather than assessing individual vulnerabilities in isolation, the technology examines how weaknesses can be connected to create exploitable attack paths. The system uses Red Tempest, an offensive AI model within CrowdStrike SafeMind, to simulate attacker behaviour across thousands of potential steps.
Operating within controlled, customer-approved testing environments, the technology can adapt to existing security measures and explore alternative routes towards critical business assets. This approach is designed to help security teams understand how attackers could exploit weaknesses across interconnected systems.
Combining AI with real-world threat intelligence
The new capability draws on CrowdStrike’s threat intelligence covering more than 290 tracked adversaries. SafeMind combines information from Falcon sensor telemetry, expert-labelled threat intelligence and the experience of CrowdStrike’s security analysts and incident response teams. This information is used alongside data about each customer’s IT environment to develop attack simulations that reflect real-world cybercriminal behaviour. The system examines vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and weaknesses in identity management to identify potential routes into sensitive infrastructure. CrowdStrike says this allows security teams to prioritise remediation activities according to the risks posed to critical assets, rather than simply addressing vulnerabilities individually.
Adam Meyers, Head of Counter Adversary Operations at CrowdStrike, explained that AI-enabled attackers can operate at a speed and scale that conventional security processes struggle to match. The company believes organisations need security tools capable of identifying exploitable weaknesses and validating corrective action before attackers can take advantage of them.
Validating security improvements
A central feature of Agentic Adversary Emulation is its ability to assess whether security improvements have successfully addressed identified risks. After identifying a potential attack path, the platform can recommend corrective measures, including software patches, configuration changes and additional detection controls. Red Tempest can then repeat the simulated attack to evaluate whether those changes have prevented the original route from being exploited. The process brings attack simulation, remediation recommendations and validation together within the Falcon platform. By repeating these activities, CrowdStrike aims to help organisations strengthen their cybersecurity posture as new vulnerabilities and attack techniques emerge.
Supporting the next generation of enterprise security
The launch forms part of CrowdStrike’s wider strategy to integrate advanced AI capabilities into its cybersecurity platform. The company is seeking to combine automated offensive security testing with defensive technologies, enabling organisations to identify and address potential weaknesses within a unified environment. Agentic Adversary Emulation is currently available in early access to selected customers through CrowdStrike’s Project QuiltWorks partners. During this phase, the company will work with participating organisations to refine the technology and its operational safeguards. The announcement highlights the growing role of AI in enterprise cybersecurity, particularly as businesses seek more effective ways to identify complex attack paths, prioritise security improvements and validate their defences against increasingly sophisticated threats.
