The stakes of one thing going fallacious with AI are extremely excessive. Solely 29% of organizations really feel totally outfitted to detect and forestall unauthorized tampering with AI[1]. With AI, rising dangers goal completely different levels of the AI lifecycle, whereas accountability lies with completely different house owners together with builders, finish customers and distributors.
As AI turns into ubiquitous, enterprises will use and develop tons of if not 1000’s of AI purposes. Builders want AI safety and security guardrails that work for each utility. In parallel, deployers and finish customers are speeding to undertake AI to enhance productiveness, probably exposing their group to knowledge leakage or the poisoning of proprietary knowledge. This provides to the rising dangers associated to organizations transferring past public knowledge to coach fashions on their proprietary knowledge.
So, how can we make sure the safety of AI programs? Learn how to shield AI from unauthorized entry and misuse? Or forestall knowledge from leaking? Making certain the safety and moral use of AI programs has grow to be a important precedence. The European Union has taken vital steps on this route with the introduction of the EU AI Act.
This weblog explores how the AI Act addresses safety for AI programs and fashions, the significance of AI literacy amongst workers, and Cisco’s strategy for safeguarding AI by a holistic AI Protection imaginative and prescient.
The EU AI Act: A Framework for Safe AI
The EU AI Act represents a landmark effort by the EU to create a structured strategy to AI governance. Certainly one of its parts is its emphasis on cybersecurity necessities for high-risk AI programs. This consists of mandating robust safety protocols to forestall unauthorized entry and misuse, guaranteeing that AI programs function safely and predictably.
The Act promotes human oversight, recognizing that whereas AI can drive efficiencies, human judgment stays indispensable in stopping and mitigating dangers. It additionally acknowledges the essential position of all workers in guaranteeing safety, requiring each suppliers and deployers to take measures to make sure a enough stage of AI literacy of their employees.
Figuring out and clarifying roles and obligations in securing AI programs is complicated. The AI Act main focus is on the builders of AI programs and sure normal function AI mannequin suppliers, though it rightly acknowledges the shared accountability between builders and deployers, underscoring the complicated nature of the AI worth chain.
Cisco’s Imaginative and prescient for Securing AI
In response to the rising want for AI safety, Cisco has envisioned a complete strategy to defending the event, deployment and use of AI purposes. This imaginative and prescient builds on 5 key facets of AI safety, from securing entry to AI purposes, to detecting dangers akin to knowledge leakage and complex adversarial threats, all the way in which to coaching workers.
“When embracing AI, organizations shouldn’t have to decide on between velocity and security. In a dynamic panorama the place competitors is fierce, successfully securing know-how all through their lifecycle and with out tradeoffs is how Cisco reimages safety for the age of AI.”
- Automated Vulnerability Evaluation: By utilizing AI-driven strategies, organizations can robotically and constantly assess AI fashions and purposes for vulnerabilities. This helps determine tons of of potential security and safety dangers, empowering safety groups to proactively handle them.
- Runtime Safety: Implementing protections throughout the operation of AI programs helps defend towards evolving threats like denial of service, and delicate knowledge leakage, and ensures these programs run safely.
- Person Protections and Knowledge Loss Prevention: Organizations want instruments that forestall knowledge loss and monitor unsafe behaviors. Firms want to make sure AI purposes are utilized in compliance with inner insurance policies and regulatory necessities.
- Managing Shadow AI: It’s essential to observe and management unauthorized AI purposes, often known as shadow AI. Figuring out third-party apps utilized by workers helps corporations implement insurance policies to limit entry to unauthorized instruments, defending confidential info and guaranteeing compliance.
- Residents and workers coaching: Alongside the best technological options, AI literacy amongst workers is essential for the protected and efficient use of AI. Rising AI literacy helps construct a workforce able to responsibly managing AI instruments, understanding their limitations, and recognizing potential dangers. This, in flip, helps organizations adjust to regulatory necessities and fosters a tradition of AI safety and moral consciousness.
“The EU AI Act underscores the significance of equipping workers with extra than simply technical data. It’s about implementing a holistic strategy to AI literacy that additionally covers safety and moral issues. This helps be sure that customers are higher ready to securely deal with AI and to harness the potential of this revolutionary know-how.”
This imaginative and prescient is embedded in Cisco’s new know-how answer “AI Protection”. Within the multifaceted quest to safe AI applied sciences, laws just like the EU AI Act, alongside coaching for residents and workers, and improvements like Cisco’s AI Protection all play an essential position.
As AI continues to rework each business, these efforts are important to making sure that AI is used safely, ethically, and responsibly, in the end safeguarding each organizations and customers within the digital age.
[1] Cisco’s 2024 AI Readiness Index
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