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Accenture Invests in XBOW to Advance Continuous Offensive Security Testing and Exposure Management

Business

Accenture Invests in XBOW to Advance Continuous Offensive Security Testing and Exposure Management
Business

Business

Accenture Invests in XBOW to Advance Continuous Offensive Security Testing and Exposure Management

2026-05-06 20:14 Last Updated At:20:30

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 6, 2026--

Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has made a strategic investment in XBOW, a leading autonomous cybersecurity testing platform powered by agentic AI. This investment, made through Accenture Ventures, will also establish a partnership between Accenture and XBOW to help clients proactively identify and mitigate exploitable risks in increasingly complex, AI-driven technology environments.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260506711275/en/

The shift to agentic AI is reshaping both how enterprises operate and how they are attacked. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026, produced in collaboration with Accenture, roughly two-thirds of organizations expect AI to have the most significant impact on cybersecurity in the year ahead, yet only 37% have processes in place to assess the security of AI tools before deployment. Enterprise applications and infrastructure remain among the least-tested layers of the stack, a gap that adversaries are now scaling AI to exploit.

By combining the scale, speed, and pattern recognition of advanced AI with the creativity, judgement, and strategic thinking of human hackers, XBOW is well-suited to integrate with enterprise environments and find vulnerabilities before attackers can. To help do this, XBOW will be integrated into Accenture’s Cyber.AI solution, which enables organizations to transform their security operations, moving from human-speed response to continuous, AI-driven cyber capabilities.

“With advanced AI heightening the speed and severity of attacks on organizations, it’s critical that enterprises be proactive with their defenses, including their penetration testing efforts,” said Harpreet Sidhu, global cybersecurity lead at Accenture. “Accenture’s investment in XBOW will help clients continuously test and validate their systems for security gaps and ensure they have the information and guidance needed to remediate these issues quickly.”

XBOW specializes in developing systems designed to emulate how real-world attackers identify and exploit weaknesses in software and infrastructure. Its proprietary platform autonomously maps application environments, probes for vulnerabilities, and attempts multi-step exploitation paths, producing evidence-based insights into enterprise security gaps that are exploitable by threat actors. This approach differs from traditional manual scanning methods by using agentic AI to focus not only on detection, but on recreating and testing the conditions under which vulnerabilities can be leveraged in realistic attack scenarios.

“Partnering with Accenture will enable us to bring XBOW to a broader set of clients,” said Oege de Moor, CEO of XBOW. “As new AI models make it easier to exploit gaps in enterprise defenses, organizations need to move faster. Together, we’ll help make continuous offensive security a priority for security teams worldwide.”

The investment in XBOW aligns with Accenture's cybersecurity AI reinvention strategy and underscores the shift towards AI-augmented cybersecurity capabilities. By seamlessly integrating human expertise with AI agents, Accenture is reinventing enterprise protection and delivering a new class of managed cybersecurity services built for the AI era.

The terms of the investment were not disclosed.

About Accenture
Accenture is a leading solutions and services company that helps the world’s leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed across the enterprise, bringing together the talent of our approximately 786,000 people, our proprietary assets and platforms, and deep ecosystem relationships. Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and to be the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great place to work in the world. Through our Reinvention Services we bring together our capabilities across strategy, consulting, technology, operations, Song and Industry X with our deep industry expertise to create and deliver solutions and services for our clients. Our purpose is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity, and we measure our success by the 360° value we create for all our stakeholders. Visit us at accenture.com.

About XBOW
XBOW is the autonomous offensive security company redefining cyber defense for the AI era. Combining AI reasoning with offensive security workflows, the XBOW platform delivers expert-level security testing at machine speed. XBOW empowers security teams to transform from reactive to proactive defense at AI scale. For XBOW customers, autonomous offense is the best defense.

Copyright © 2026 Accenture. All rights reserved. Accenture and its logo are registered trademarks of Accenture.

Accenture has made a strategic investment in XBOW, a leading autonomous cybersecurity testing platform powered by agentic AI.

Accenture has made a strategic investment in XBOW, a leading autonomous cybersecurity testing platform powered by agentic AI.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is appearing Wednesday before a House committee investigating sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as lawmakers seek answers for Lutnick's contact with him in the years after Epstein's 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

Lutnick, a member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet, is the latest powerful political figure to appear before the House Oversight Committee. He has previously given contradictory statements about his relationship with Epstein, but he says he has done nothing wrong and welcomes the closed-door interview with lawmakers.

Still, the transcribed interview presented a test of how much scrutiny lawmakers will apply to powerful men who kept company with Epstein even after it was known that he had solicited prostitution from an underage girl. Trump's Republican administration has tried unsuccessfully for more than a year to move past the issue.

Lutnick is the highest-ranked official in the Trump administration, besides Trump himself, to be named in the case files on Epstein. Trump has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.

Several Democrats have called for Lutnick to resign, and a few Republicans, including Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, have said he should at least testify before the Oversight panel.

Lutnick has downplayed his ties to Epstein, who was once his neighbor in New York City. Under questioning from Democrats during an unrelated hearing earlier this year, he described their contact as a handful of emails and a pair of meetings in 2011 and 2012.

But that admission came after he had previously claimed on a podcast last year that he had decided to “never be in the room” with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife.

In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state sex offense charges in Florida, including soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.

“I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with him,” Lutnick told senators in February when he was asked about Epstein during a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

But Lutnick, who was previously the head of brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, actually had an hourlong engagement at Epstein’s home in 2011. His family then visited Epstein’s infamous private island in 2012 for lunch.

The federal release of case files on Epstein also showed that the two had kept in contact through email. Lutnick in 2018 emailed Epstein about a proposed expansion of a museum in their neighborhood that would have blocked the view from their homes. Epstein also gave $50,000 to a 2017 dinner honoring Lutnick, while Lutnick invited Epstein to a 2015 fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. In 2013, they both invested in the same business venture.

The White House has continued to express support for Lutnick, who was one of the biggest boosters of Trump's sweeping tariffs strategy. He has been close to Trump for years and helped fundraise for his 2020 and 2024 campaigns.

The House Oversight Committee is also scheduled to hear testimony on May 29 from Pam Bondi, who was pushed out from her job as attorney general last month.

Epstein died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Follow the AP's coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.

FILE - President Donald Trump speaks as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, April 17, 2025, in Washington, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick listens. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, FIle)

FILE - President Donald Trump speaks as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, April 17, 2025, in Washington, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick listens. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, FIle)

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick delivers his budget estimates to the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies budget hearing at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, April 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick delivers his budget estimates to the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies budget hearing at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, April 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick delivers his budget estimates to the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies budget hearing at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, April 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick delivers his budget estimates to the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies budget hearing at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, April 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

FILE - Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick attends an event on health care affordability in the Oval Office at the White House, April 23, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

FILE - Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick attends an event on health care affordability in the Oval Office at the White House, April 23, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

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