Merlin, a technology partner with extensive government expertise and mission-ready solutions, today announced that Torq, a leader in agentic security operations, has been selected as a key technology partner for Merlin’s SOC Modernization architecture serving federal agencies. The collaboration brings together Torq’s AI SOC Platform with Merlin’s validated architecture, federal market expertise, and compliance infrastructure to help agencies accelerate threat detection, investigation, and response. Merlin is also helping advance Torq’s path toward FedRAMP authorization through Constellation GovCloud (CGC).
Bringing the Agentic SOC to Federal Agencies
SOC Modernization is part of Merlin Validated Solutions (MVS), a portfolio of pre-tested, mission-ready architectures. MVS brings together independent security technologies within a unified, end-to-end detection-to-response workflow that combines automation with governance. Under the architecture, actions are subject to a human-in-the-loop authorization model rather than being allowed to execute without oversight. Instead of displacing agencies’ existing security investments, MVS coordinates disconnected technologies through a single workflow capable of identifying threats, analyzing security data, validating automated actions, and executing responses at machine speed and scale. This provides federal agencies and critical infrastructure sectors with pre-tested, compliant, mission-ready architectures.
The Torq AI SOC Platform provides federal agencies with a fundamentally different approach to protecting mission-critical environments. Its agentic AI continuously ingests and contextualizes alerts across the existing security stack, automatically triages threats, investigates the highest-risk incidents, and carries out response and remediation according to agency-defined guardrails. By connecting the complete incident lifecycle rather than introducing another point tool, Torq enables agencies to increase SOC capacity without a proportional increase in headcount, respond at machine speed to increasingly sophisticated threats, and allow human analysts to concentrate on incidents requiring expert judgment. Agentic actions remain transparent, governed, and auditable, delivering the oversight and accountability expected in federal environments. As analysts confirm or correct actions, those interactions can improve system accuracy over time, allowing agencies to gradually progress from human-in-the-loop to human-on-the-loop operations as confidence increases.
“Federal agencies don’t need another promise of what AI could do for security — they need proven technology that can operate at mission scale, with the governance and controls government demands,” said Ofer Smadari, CEO of Torq. “The Torq AI SOC Platform was built for this moment. It brings agentic AI to the full security operations lifecycle, enabling teams to investigate and respond at machine speed while keeping humans in control. With an enterprise-proven platform and a clear path to FedRAMP authorization, Torq is ready to bring the power of the AI SOC to the federal market. Merlin knows how to turn breakthrough technology into mission-ready capability, and we’re excited to work together to make agentic security operations a reality across government.”
The Emerging Government Imperative for the SOC
The partnership comes as federal agencies face increasing pressure to modernize security operations and close a widening operational gap. In March 2026, the White House published President Trump’s Cyber Strategy for America, calling on federal agencies to deploy AI-powered cybersecurity solutions to protect federal networks and deter intrusions at scale. In June 2026, CISA’s Binding Operational Directive 26-04 reduced remediation timelines for the highest-risk vulnerabilities to as little as three days, reflecting the increasingly narrow window between vulnerability disclosure and exploitation. Legacy SIEM and SOAR technologies, along with the limited number of analysts available to operate them, were not designed for this pace. With agentic AI already progressing beyond the pilot phase in the commercial sector, federal agencies increasingly require access to comparable capabilities through a compliant deployment path.
“AI is accelerating vulnerability discovery and rapidly compressing the time from discovery to exploitation. Federal security teams need to operate at the same speed,” said Robert Costello, Chief Digital and Information Officer at Merlin. “Torq significantly closes that gap by automating triage, investigation, and response action, helping defenders act faster across increasingly complex environments. Merlin is supporting Torq through its FedRAMP journey, and I’m equally excited to bring the platform into our own SOC and experience it firsthand.”
The collaboration also builds on Merlin Ventures‘ investment in Torq, which was announced as part of Torq’s $140 million Series D financing earlier this year. The partnership is expected to support the rapid expansion of the Torq AI SOC Platform as the companies work to protect the nation’s most critical infrastructure.
Merlin and Torq will both exhibit at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, D.C., September 8–10, 2026. Attendees can visit Merlin at Booth #308 and Torq at Booth #317 to learn more about the partnership and see an in-person demonstration.
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