Government of Alberta uses Claude to find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities across government systems

The Government of Alberta is using Claude Code, powered by Opus and Sonnet models, to identify and remediate cybersecurity vulnerabilities across its provincial systems. The Ministry of Technology and Innovation maintains roughly 1,280 applications and 3,400 code repositories, many of which contain outdated software and accumulated technical debt. By deploying autonomous AI agents to scan 466 million lines of code, the government completed a comprehensive security review in 20 hours, a task estimated to take 6.5 years using traditional methods.

Beyond scanning, the AI agents generate and test security patches, and in cases where legacy code is too complex to repair, they assist in rebuilding systems using modern programming languages. The ministry has also implemented continuous security monitoring through specialized red and blue team agents that probe applications for exploits and verify defenses against international security standards. All AI-generated fixes undergo review and approval by human engineers before deployment.

This initiative aims to reduce maintenance costs and modernize aging infrastructure, such as consolidating 185 legacy applications into 16 modern, reusable tools. To assist other public sector organizations facing similar technical debt, Alberta has published a series of white papers documenting its methodology. The government is also training staff and the public through the Alberta AI Academy to ensure these modernization efforts can be scaled across all provincial ministries.