Can the Company That Sparked a Global Breach Build Safe AI?

In 2020, the SolarWinds “Sunburst” attack demonstrated how a trusted software update could become a global entry point for espionage. The compromised Orion monitoring platform reached more than 18,000 organizations, including U.S. government agencies and Fortune 500 firms. Investigators later described it as one of the most sophisticated supply-chain intrusions ever uncovered.

Five years later, SolarWinds is again in the spotlight. This week, the company released a new AI agent designed to automate incident response, summarize system alerts, and recommend remediation actions across its observability and IT service management products.

Rebuilding trust through design

Since 2020, SolarWinds has rebuilt its engineering pipeline around what it calls Secure by Design, a program emphasizing parallel build environments, code-signing, and stronger access controls. The company says independent audits have validated those controls, and in mid-2025, it reached a preliminary agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to settle litigation over its breach disclosures.

The new AI system is governed under a complementary framework called AI by Design, which SolarWinds describes as incorporating human-in-the-loop oversight, traceability of decision chains, and continuous logging. Product documentation states that all AI actions are “recorded, traced, and auditable,” and that human operators retain approval authority for system-level changes.