AI security is not a neat, one-line definition you can slap on a slide. Depending on who you ask, it means everything from stopping rogue AI agents to policing what your employees paste into ChatGPT. The reality is simpler, yet chaotic: we now live in a world where every corner of the stack has AI jammed into it, and security teams are scrambling to keep up.
Let us share how we think about AI Security and hopefully break down the chaos.
The two sides of AI Security
To keep things simple, and to cover the wide range of AI use cases inside an organization, we break AI Security into two categories: how your company consumes AI and how it builds with AI. Of course, these categories can overlap.
- Securing how your people use AI.
Employees are throwing sensitive data into ChatGPT, wiring up GitHub Copilot to company code, and tinkering with AI plugins or MCP servers. Multiply that across thousands of tools launching every quarter (remember the DeepSeek frenzy?), and you’ve got a governance nightmare. You can’t write a policy for each shiny new tool. You need visibility, dynamic detection, and automatic enforcement that doesn’t grind productivity to a halt. - Securing what you build with AI.
By 2025, every company should be building with AI. That could mean an AI-powered customer support chatbot on your site or embedding AI into the core of your software offering. (Let’s face it, there’s an Agentic AI company for everything these days.) But none of this is immune to risk. Prompt injection, data leakage, token abuse, hallucinations, toxic content, or even agents going rogue are not hypotheticals. AI has introduced an entirely new class of threats, many tied to how you expose it to customers, partners, and employees. The harder part is that AI teams aren’t necessarily security teams. And if you are innovating at AI speed, you need to bring security into the process from the very beginning.
But innovating at the pace of AI means bringing security considerations from early on.
The kicker: these categories don’t stay separate. The moment an internal AI app for employee use (think an internal chat connected to your knowledge bases powered by GPT-4). While you may not be dealing with sensitive data exfiltration to external models, you can be sure that employees will be asking the chat how much is your CEO making.
The Confusion in the Market
Vendors muddy the waters by slapping “AI Security” on whatever they’re selling. Some are doing AI-powered security (better detection and remediation with LLMs). This is an entirely different category.
In AI Security, vendors tend to focus on a few themes: visibility, monitoring, and governance. Some focus on model security, while others concentrate on AppSec, handling runtime enforcement for your in-house AI applications.
Adding to the mix, the network security or data loss prevention giants are jumping on the AI bandwagon, too. And sure, some AI security risks can be partially addressed by tweaking your existing tools, but blocking AI domains with a static URL filter will not cut it. Not even close.
The first step is to simplify things into two categories: how employees are using (or want to use) AI, and what the company’s strategy is for building with AI.
Once you’ve sorted this out, you can start ticking the boxes and building the strategy. And the technology comes next.
Where Prompt Security Fits In
This is exactly why we built Prompt Security. Our platform gives you full visibility into AI usage across your organization, detects shadow tools before they become a problem, and enforces guardrails automatically without slowing teams down. On the build side, we provide runtime protection against prompt injection, data leaks, and rogue agent behavior so you can innovate safely.
Whether your challenge is reigning in employee AI use or protecting the apps you’re building, Prompt Security closes the gap between today’s AI chaos and the security you actually need.
Bottom Line
AI security isn’t a checkbox. It’s not a product category you can buy off the shelf and call it a day. It’s the ongoing work of securing both how your organization uses AI and what you’re building with it. Miss either side, and you’re leaving doors wide open.
The good news? The industry is catching on. The bad news? Attackers already have.
Want to get a handle on AI Security? Book a demo with our team today!
TLDR: This blog takes the long route. If you’d prefer the quick version, the video sums up AI Security in a straight shot.
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