Proactive cyber defense for governments and enterprises
2026-09-03 · Google DeepMind
Google Launches Fairwind Program: Proactive Cyber Defense for Governments and Enterprises
Defenders wanting to use advanced AI have long faced a difficult dilemma: adopt enormous frontier models that are expensive to deploy and difficult to control across enterprise codebases, or turn to smaller open-weight models that may struggle with complex vulnerability remediation and require teams to build their own tooling and infrastructure from scratch. Google's new Fairwind Program aims to resolve this trade-off.
What the Fairwind Program Offers
The Fairwind Program is a limited-access initiative that brings the best of Google's AI and cyber defense capabilities to a trusted group of Google Cloud customers, government agencies, and cybersecurity partners, helping them proactively solve cyber risks at scale. As a first step, the program gives defenders access to powerful Gemini models to autonomously find and fix vulnerabilities, protecting critical infrastructure, public services, and national security.
Finding and Autonomously Fixing Vulnerabilities
The program combines Google's most advanced cyber model, Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, with the CodeMender harness, enabling defenders to find, verify, and fix vulnerabilities at agentic scale. As Google puts it, spotting weaknesses creates awareness and fear; autonomously finding and fixing vulnerabilities delivers security.
CodeMender with Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber delivers the specialized reasoning needed to write and validate code fixes, at a fraction of the operating cost of traditional frontier models. Instead of taking weeks to manually fix vulnerabilities, defenders can now generate verified, deployment-ready patches in minutes—all within an organization's secure cloud environment.
Scaling Frontline Defense
Providing early access to these powerful capabilities gives trusted defenders a vital adaptation window to harden their systems before bad actors can exploit new capabilities. Initial access is being staged for the government and enterprise partners most critical to society's resilience:
- Governments and national cyber authorities: Hardening public-sector networks and citizen services against targeted intrusions.
- Critical infrastructure operators: Protecting essential services across healthcare, telecommunications, energy, and financial networks from operational disruption.
- Core technology platforms: Securing widespread software foundations to uplift digital security for millions of downstream users at once.
To ensure these capabilities are used responsibly, participating organizations agree to strict operational standards, including limiting access to employees within their internal cybersecurity, incident response, or penetration testing teams and deploying protections such as multi-factor authentication. More than 650 partners globally are already participating, and trusted defenders and industry leaders are already putting Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber into practice.
The Fairwind Program will evolve alongside its partners' and users' needs. Google plans to adapt its product offerings and expand partner access, collaborating closely with industry, governments, and open-weight community leaders to strike the right balance between open access and robust security.
Notably, while Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber access is prioritized for Fairwind Program customers, any Google Cloud customer can proactively secure their code using CodeMender with publicly available models hosted on the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, in combination with industry-leading solutions offered through AI Threat Defense.
Ecosystem-Scale Impact on Cyber Defense
Years of Google's pioneering zero-trust architecture, advanced AI defenses, and built-in security allow the company to protect billions of accounts daily. The Fairwind Program builds on this experience as part of a broader commitment to global cyber resilience across the entire digital ecosystem, including fortifying grassroots cyber defense.
Through Google.org, Google's latest commitment brings its total cybersecurity funding to more than $100 million globally. The company also released its 2026 Google.org US Cybersecurity Impact Report, which details $36 million in funding for 35 cyber clinics to date—providing free, hands-on security support to over 1,250 hospitals, public school districts, and municipal utilities across the United States.
Providing a Security Advantage
The defender's edge comes from shrinking the time between detecting a flaw and patching it. Through the Fairwind Program, government and enterprise partners gain autonomous tools to repair systems faster and at scale, keeping them one step ahead of agentic-speed threats.