Microsoft builds AI Red Team in Israel as cyber risks accelerate
The company expands its Israeli security operations to simulate advanced attacks on AI systems.
Microsoft’s development center in Israel is establishing a new Israeli AI Red Team focused on identifying weaknesses and threats in artificial intelligence systems. The new group will simulate advanced attacks on the company’s AI-driven services and operate within Microsoft’s internal security organization. At the same time, Microsoft is recruiting approximately 50 employees for cybersecurity roles in Israel, including positions for the new team, which already numbers several dozen specialists.
The rapid spread of artificial intelligence is creating unprecedented efficiencies, but it is also opening the door to a new generation of cyber risks. Microsoft security experts report an 80% increase in data-leak incidents linked to the growing use of AI tools by employees. To address these threats, Microsoft relies on a vast security intelligence infrastructure that monitors roughly 100 trillion signals daily, detects about 600 million cyberattacks each day, and executes 72 billion preventive actions. This global visibility provides the foundation on which the new AI Red Team in Israel will develop capabilities to simulate advanced attacks and defenses at scale.
Microsoft’s AI Red Team is a global unit tasked with conducting proactive, end-to-end attack simulations across the company’s services and systems, mirroring the methods of real adversaries. Its goal is to uncover critical vulnerabilities, expose systemic risks, and strengthen protections for hundreds of millions of users worldwide. The new Israeli group will be led by Daniel Goltz, who has held senior cybersecurity roles at Microsoft’s Israeli R&D center for the past eight years.
The team will focus on researching vulnerabilities in AI models and systems, as well as developing autonomous, AI-driven tools to carry out sophisticated attack simulations against Microsoft’s internal environments. This work significantly expands the company’s ability to anticipate emerging threats and assess future cybersecurity challenges in the era of AI. Operating within Microsoft’s vast cloud infrastructure allows the Israeli group to test autonomous offensive and defensive capabilities at an unprecedented scale, directly influencing the security of Microsoft’s products and services globally.
Microsoft Israel Research and Development, one of the company’s strategic global development centers, employs thousands of people across roughly 30 product groups. The center plays a central role in the development of core AI and cybersecurity technologies that affect hundreds of millions of users worldwide. About half of its workforce is engaged in cybersecurity, making Israel a key pillar of Microsoft’s global security and AI strategy.
