At Block, the company behind Square, Cash App, and Afterpay, the security team uses the OpenAI Defense Factory, where AI handles vulnerability discovery, detection, and response at a scale no human team could match. With systems including OpenAI Daybreak, Block now completes work that once took weeks in just hours.
"AI is compressing the time from human intent to action," said James Nettesheim, Chief Information Security Officer at Block. "For a while, it was assumed that there was an attacker advantage since they're faster and more nimble. But with things like Daybreak and the advancements in OpenAI's tooling, defenders are able to fight fire with fire and keep up with the rapid pace of AI adoption."
Block's security team has focused on adopting AI responsibly across workflows, from code generation to security operations. Nettesheim describes the technology as a new teammate that can scale. Tasks like reviewing a software bug or parsing a log that once took days now take a fraction of the time, with a human validating every result. For detection tuning, the team can replay a proposed change against seven months of production telemetry in under an hour, work that previously meant requerying hundreds of old cases by hand.
The team has also learned to match models to tasks. Block's security harness routes work to the right model and includes hooks for humans to take over or for agents to verify each other's work. The automated triage system has delivered a 50% boost to triage throughput, a 50% increase in intelligence gathering and investigations, and a new autonomous hunting capability. Nettesheim says the system performs about 1,100 analyst-hours of investigation per quarter, giving every alert a full, deep review.
Source: OpenAI Blog · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing