Japanese cyber-security firm Trend Micro is using digital-twin technology to help enterprises handle proactive security.

The cyber resilience model lets enterprises simulate real-world cyber threats, validate their defences and adapt policies in real time across complex and diverse digital environments.

At the core of this model is Trend’s agentic AI and industry-first application of cyber-security digital-twin technology (www.trendmicro.com/en_us/business/ai/digital-twin.html). By creating high-fidelity, continuously updated simulation of an organisation’s infrastructure, Trend enables security teams to visualise risk, test scenarios safely and make rapid, data-driven decisions that improve resilience and reduce business disruptions. 

The shift from periodic assessments to continuous, intelligent simulation marks an evolution in proactive cyber security (www.trendmicro.com/en_us/what-is/proactive-security.html). It allows organisations to stay ahead of adversaries, harden their environments to circumvent cyber-security threats, and confidently secure mission-critical operations against an ever-changing threat landscape. The technology shifts security practices from static and reactive to dynamic and predictive, enabling measurable improvements across a range of critical use cases.

“Trend’s digital-twin approach completely changes our ability to understand risk in real time,” said Stuart Samples, chief technology officer at Northeast Georgia Health System (www.nghs.com).” It helps us catch threats we didn’t even know to look for, allowing our team to focus less on firefighting and more on confidently driving innovation.”

Trend’s cyber-security digital-twin technology is powered by Nvidia accelerated computing and AI enterprise software, including Nvidia NIM microservices. This enterprise-grade software enables the delivery of agentic AI models, optimised inference and secure, scalable deployment, combining the simplicity of APIs with the flexibility of self-hosted infrastructure to strengthen cyber-security outcomes with AI-driven precision.

“In today’s rapidly evolving cyber-security landscape, organisations need proactive options that can anticipate and counter potential threats before they occur,” said Bartley Richardson, senior engineering director at Nvidia (www.nvidia.com). “Powered by Nvidia NIM microservices, Trend’s cyber-security digital twins bring AI-driven protection to enterprise infrastructure.”

The digital-twin model should help organisations proactively manage risk across their entire infrastructure, from on-prem to cloud, IT to OT, and legacy to future AI-powered systems.

AI agents simulate threats and tactics within the digital twin, long before a real-world incident occurs. This helps test current mitigation strategies in a continuous cycle, to improve resilience planning for sensitive and complex environments.

Decision makers can introduce tools, policies or architectural changes to see how they perform in the virtual environment. This results in better informed, data-driven investment decisions.

Digital-twin technology can be used to simulate business-critical failure scenarios to highlight how data flows, how decisions are made and how disruptions ripple across IT and OT systems and teams. These real-time risk insights boost enterprise security planning capabilities without risking disruption to production systems.

“As threats migrate to OT, proactive security is critical,” said Frank Dickson, group vice president at IDC (www.idc.com). “Trend Micro’s digital-twin technology introduces a new operational model for enterprise cyber security: simulation. Sometimes even probing a production network can result in downtime, often making it extremely difficult to expose vulnerabilities and confirm compensating measures. A continuous cycle of adversary simulation and defensive validation becomes a value tool to ensure that organisations stay ahead of cyber threats, while being sensitive to the fragility of some operational environments.”

Recently, Trend announced it would open source its Cybertron AI model and agent framework to accelerate the development of autonomous cyber-security agents. Its work has also expanded to cover protection for gen-AI workloads and advances to sovereign AI infrastructure.

“Enterprises are struggling to defend complex, dynamic infrastructure environments from highly adaptive, AI-powered adversaries,” said Rachel Jin, chief enterprise platform officer at Trend. “Rapid shifts in threat actor tactics and IT infrastructure mean reactive, point-in-time risk assessments are no longer fit for purpose. Our digital-twin technology empowers customers to simulate threats and safely validate security controls without touching production systems, to finally close the gap between digital transformation and defensive readiness.”

Trend Micro (www.TrendMicro.com) has 7000 employees across 70 countries.