Generative AI has brought with it a transformational change across so many aspects of technology. Those who don’t adopt it will risk falling behind, and in a highly competitive world, it’ll be key to any business’s survival. So, embracing it is not optional. But how do you securely do so without putting endless guardrails and constraints?
What are the top Generative AI risks
Based on our experience in the field and actual incidents we've observed with our clients, the most significant risks of generative AI at present are practical, not theoretical, and we see them happening more and more often:
- Shadow AI: Adoption, usage, and integration of various GenAI tools daily without any visibility to them or their compliance/security guarantees. Many integrate with your company’s critical assets, and several use your data for future training.
- Sensitive Data Disclosure: Whether it's through ShadowAI or well-known platforms like ChatGPT or Jasper, sensitive data from your organization is being streamed to these GenAI tools 24/7. This is happening at an unprecedented pace, and unlike any other tool we've seen, there's a significant probability that this data will be used for future training and potentially be generated by these tools on external endpoints in the coming weeks or months.
- Jailbreaks/Prompt Injection: Exposing your GenAI application to customers makes you vulnerable. A malicious actor can craft a prompt in plain English that can lead to embarrassing and harmful effects on your brand reputation, up to and including denial of service, legal complications, or severe attacks like remote code execution or SQL injection.
How can you securely embrace GenAI
As you start preparing strategically on how to adopt GenAI across the organization for the many different use cases it can serve, here are some key considerations to keep in mind:
- See - Gain full visibility of GenAI usage in your organization, including third-party services used by your employees and internal GenAI apps exposed to the outside world.
- Govern - Define and enforce AI policies across your organization. Decide what is permissible, to whom, and what measures to implement for protection.
- Involve - As an initial mitigation tactic, involve a human in the loop in any GenAI application. Though not a long-term strategy, it's a good starting point.
- Limit - Ensure that when these GenAI tools are integrated with your internal assets, such as databases, APIs, or code, everything operates on the principle of least privilege, preventing unnecessary exposure to the LLMs.
- Monitor - Constant monitoring is essential for heavily adopting GenAI in production, covering compliance, audit logs, forensics, and real-time protection.
- Protect - Even with careful implementation of all the above measures, mistakes can happen. Highly sophisticated systems are prone to errors. Therefore, we urge you to adopt a real-time protection solution that ensures everything related to GenAI in your organization is secure and safe.
Final thoughts
You might wonder if it’s time to get protected against GenAI risks. While it may seem non-urgent at the moment, the rapid pace of adoption, upcoming regulations, and customer demand indicate that it's only a matter of weeks or months before GenAI attacks will become mainstream. As always in security, it's better to prepare in advance and build the necessary cyber resilience.
Talk to our experts on how you can prepare a strategy to securely embrace Generative AI. Book your meeting with us today.
