Microsoft’s development center in Israel is creating a new Israeli AI Red Team, focused on identifying weaknesses and threats in artificial intelligence systems. The new group will simulate advanced attacks against the company’s AI-based services and operate within Microsoft’s internal security organization. At the same time, Microsoft is recruiting around 50 employees for cybersecurity positions in Israel, including positions for the new team, which already has several dozen specialists.
The rapid spread of artificial intelligence is generating unprecedented efficiency gains, 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 employees’ growing use of AI tools. To address these threats, Microsoft relies on an extensive security intelligence infrastructure that monitors approximately 100 trillion signals daily, detects approximately 600 million cyberattacks each day, and executes 72 billion preventive actions. This global visibility forms the basis 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 responsible for conducting end-to-end proactive attack simulations on company services and systems, mirroring the methods of real-world adversaries. Its goal is to uncover critical vulnerabilities, expose systemic risks, and strengthen protection for hundreds of millions of users around the world. 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 finding vulnerabilities in AI models and systems, as well as developing autonomous AI-based tools to perform 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 AI era. Operating within Microsoft’s vast cloud infrastructure allows the Israeli group to test autonomous offensive and defensive capabilities on an unprecedented scale, directly influencing the security of Microsoft products and services on a global scale.
Microsoft Israel Research and Development, one of the company’s global strategic development centers, employs thousands of people across approximately 30 product groups. The center plays a central role in developing core AI and cybersecurity technologies that impact hundreds of millions of users around the world. About half of its workforce is engaged in cybersecurity, making Israel a key pillar of Microsoft’s global security and AI strategy.
