Cardinal is a technical program that offers free red teaming for American essential infrastructure.
Mission
Strengthen national cyber resilience by equipping essential infrastructure with continuous testing - to find weaknesses before adversaries exploit them.Strengthen national cyber resilience by equipping essential infrastructure with continuous testing - to find weaknesses before adversaries exploit them.
Collaborating Organizations
Coming Soon...
Coming Soon...
Problem
The institutions protecting America’s essential systems and services often lack the security resources to keep pace with adversaries using increasingly capable AI to find and exploit vulnerabilities.
Their defenders should not have to stand alone. National cyber resilience requires urgent collaboration and deployment of new capabilities to help.
Solution
Cardinal brings together a consortium of AI, infrastructure, and security partners to deliver safe, continuous autonomous assessments and practical hardening guidance.
Participating organizations authorize testing and define its scope. Expert operators oversee testing of participating organizations’ internet-facing assets, under strict rules of engagement. Security experts review findings and help defenders prioritize action.
The program aims to establish a technical foundation for broader government cyber resilience initiatives.
Who It Is For
Cardinal’s free assessments are intended for smaller U.S. municipalities, local utilities, and other organizations providing essential services to their communities, such as water, power, and public safety.
The program prioritizes smaller organizations that lack access to continuous testing and expert support.
Operating Model and FAQs
What is entailed in the free assessments?
Semi-frequent autonomous red team assessments of the external attack surface with directly delivered strategic hardening guidance.
How does the technology work?
Method’s platform will map, probe, and safely test participating organizations’ internet-facing assets to identify attack paths. Frontier and open-weight models will power the assessments, helping defenders understand how attackers armed with the same capabilities might approach their systems. Palantir Foundry, AIP, and the Ontology for Cybersecurity will provide secure infrastructure to integrate and deliver findings and support collaboration.
How can I ensure the red teaming is safe and dictate the terms of the assessment?
Every organization is able to set their specific target scope in terms of allowed and disallowed assets. Furthermore, fine grained rules of engagement can be set to determine what actions can be performed, at what times, and with what level of human approval.
What does the output look like?
Adversarial informed hardening guidance (e.g. adjust network control, remove permissive access) and accompanying evidence. This is not another scan, this is an ongoing red team program that should result in action so long as there are hardening activities to take place.
Can I change my scope and rules of engagement after signing up?
Yes, you will have a portal with all of your settings and results.
How is information protected?
Participant findings are access-controlled and details are never made public beyond a support engineer.
What is the sign up process for the free assessment?
Potential participants fill out the form and a Method engineer assesses qualification. If qualified, the participant signs a red team agreement and then is onboarded to the program.
What if I don't qualify for the free assessment? (e.g. Large Enterprise)
Still reach out through the form and options such as a direct customer engagement with one or many of the operating companies can be discussed depending on the needs of the organization.
Can government agencies participate?
Yes. Government agencies can use Cardinal as a technical platform for accomplishing more expansive security initiatives such as delivering a continuous assessment program for their own systems or authorized third parties. This would be built on federal funding or some other agreed upon economic model.
