Understanding AI security for your organization

While organizations are quickly adopting AI to automate tasks and improve operations, it’s important to consider the security risks associated with integrating AI into your company’s processes and software. AI not only brings an opportunity to increase efficiency but also introduces additional risks to your organization if not used responsibly — just like a recent example from Samsung has shown. 

Security guidelines for using AI

By keeping a few security guidelines in mind, you’ll be able to mitigate the majority of risks while gaining the benefits of AI tools: 

1. Don’t assume anything shared with AI is private by default. As with other online web services, any AI tools you may use on the internet will have terms of service that define if and how they allow the provider to analyze and train models using any content submitted. Sharing your company’s confidential information can expose both you and the organization to risk, which can be mitigated by involving your Legal and Security teams early.
   
2. Verification of information. With the introduction of AI systems, users have access to a seemingly unlimited amount of information at their fingertips at all times. Even in cases where AI systems don’t know the accurate answer to a question, they will be able to provide an answer that appears to be factual and accurate, such as an example of citing non-existing articles. The popular developer platform StackOverflow has temporarily banned ChatGPT for that reason to avoid causing harm to their user base. Reviewing any information provided by AI systems is critical before using it in your decision-making. While it should be seen as a tool to increase your productivity, it may not be perfect at all times, just like any other tool.
   
3. Integrate AI platforms securely. If you’re planning to integrate any AI platforms into your software offering, follow best practices in secure software development and advice from the platforms to keep your API keys safe. Including your API keys in any software you’re sharing with end users — e.g., through mobile applications — can result in data leaks and significant costs to your organization as they can be recovered easily.

As with all new technology, new opportunities often come with new risks; this also proves to be true with AI, which is expected to have a major impact on most industries in the near future. 

Keeping the risks in mind and working with the right stakeholders within your organization allows you to manage them adequately, keeping your company and customers safe while harnessing the benefits AI tools can bring.

Learn more about using AI securely with Mattermost

Now that you understand some of the security considerations you should keep in mind, you can try it out for yourself!

If you’re interested in integrating AI with Mattermost, it’s very easy to get started.