Sophos is partnering with OpenAI to integrate frontier AI models into Sophos Fusion, giving managed service providers (MSPs) new capabilities for AI security, governance, detection, and response.
The partnership is designed to help MSPs translate advanced AI capabilities into practical security services for customers while creating new opportunities for recurring revenue.
Sophos and OpenAI target AI security and threat prevention
Sophos and OpenAI will focus on the relationship between AI and cybersecurity in three ways:
- Security from AI:
- Sophos Endpoint blocks the techniques used to exploit vulnerabilities so an unknown AI-discovered weakness meets the same wall as a known one.
- Sophos’ agentic SOC compresses detection, investigation, and response to match the speed at which AI enables attackers, with 52% of incidents resolved end-to-end by AI in an average of 89 seconds.
- Sophos researchers continuously track adversarial AI use, and what they find feeds directly back into both.
- AI for security: The OpenAI partnership aims to add frontier model capabilities on top of an AI-native foundation rather than bolting AI onto it.
- Security for AI: Sophos AI Defense gives organizations visibility into AI and shadow AI use, enforcing policy, and helping govern how sensitive data is used across AI models and tools.
Sophos Fusion brings frontier AI to the channel
Sophos Fusion will bring OpenAI’s frontier models into Sophos’ defense system – which connects endpoint, network, email, cloud, identity, and security operations while continuously compounding intelligence from every threat it encounters – in a single, coordinated defense system.
Sophos believes that many MSPs and MSSPs are well positioned to translate frontier cyber capabilities into practical security outcomes, as they understand customers’ environments and operate the workflows organizations rely on.
The combination of Sophos Fusion and OpenAI’s capabilities will enable Sophos to help approved partners enhance detection, investigation, and response, and to help MSPs develop and scale new AI security services for their customers.
“We wanted to ensure that AI and frontier AI models were built into our Fusion system,” said Chris Bell, Senior Vice President of Global Channels, Alliances, and Corporate Development at Sophos, in an interview with Channel Insider. “We believe that was going to be our best path ultimately to get that to our channel community and channel ecosystem.”
Sophos will also expand that protection with OpenAI to secure AI workloads, data, and usage, as part of a single connected defense system.
MSPs turn AI security into recurring services
Bell said that OpenAI saw value in Sophos’ scale, platform-centric approach, and ability to translate AI models into security outcomes. He pointed toward AI-powered investigations as an example of how the technology can give both partners and customers time back.
According to Bell, MSPs are increasingly being asked by customers to understand how employees use AI and whether it’s used responsibly. Visibility into AI usage and protection against AI-enabled threats are two of the primary needs facing MSPs.
Further, Bell detailed AI governance as another important area for MSPs, particularly around understanding who is using which AI tools and whether they should be doing so.
He also emphasized the importance of connecting visibility across endpoint, network, cloud, and identity environments.
Turning AI security into a revenue opportunity
While AI is creating new security challenges for MSPs, they are also creating new opportunities for those organizations to build recurring services and revenue.
Bell pointed to governance, offensive security, and automated response as examples of areas where MSPs can develop services for customers.
Bell also noted that Sophos has been building AI into its core platform for years, but highlighted that it cannot build everything internally and stay ahead of the adversary. The OpenAI partnership will enhance detections, accelerate response, and improve security outcomes.
“We always have a very open ecosystem,” Bell said. “So it’s going to advance our ability to build detections into our platform.”
Sophos will place greater emphasis on technical enablement to help MSPs build services around Fusion and its AI capabilities.
“You will see us spend more time on areas like enablement, around response automation, on the technical enablement side, AI governance, and AI security posture management,” Bell said. “How can our MSPs accelerate their time to investigations and ultimately get time back and use that time for other higher value work?”
Sophos expands its role in OpenAI’s Daybreak program
Sophos also announced that it has been invited to join a new program that extends OpenAI’s Daybreak Cyber Partner Program for managed security services.
In June, Sophos gained access to OpenAI’s cyber models to enhance Sophos products and threat intelligence.
“The benefit for customers is frontier-grade defense that would be extremely difficult to build in-house. Most organizations can’t hire the rare talent needed or take on the capacity or financial obligations associated with running frontier AI in their own security operations, and they shouldn’t have to,” Sophos CTO John Peterson wrote in a blog post.
“Customers can rely on Sophos experts to operate the latest models, govern them, and stay accountable for the outcome.”
What partners should watch for next
Bell said that Sophos and OpenAI are exploring ways to package Sophos’ ecosystem and offerings, including AI defense, with OpenAI’s frontier model. The goal is to create commercially viable offerings that can be rolled out efficiently through the channel.
“How can we take our partner, our ecosystem, some of our offerings – such as AI defense – which occur so well with the frontier models of OpenAI, and then get that into the channel community and a commercially viable package that will get our channel excited?” Bell said about the goals ahead for both companies.
Profitability and recurring services are central reasons partners should be excited about the opportunity. Bell argued that AI is expanding the number of opportunities available to MSPs and channel partners. Additionally, Sophos’ security expertise, along with its researchers and AI capabilities, is helping partners stay ahead of threats.
The goal, Bell said, is for Sophos to handle the security outcomes while partners focus on building businesses around the platform.
“Our MSP community, as well as our channel community, can sleep at night knowing that we have a platform that will help protect them. It is a joint game by all means. We need our MSPs and our MSPs need us, but we are taking care of the security outcome,” Bell stated.