Yes, You Can Secure AI Without Limiting its Potential  

Around the world, we are witnessing the incorporation of AI into daily business practices. This marks the first instance in which organizations and employees can consistently interact with these advanced machines, thereby participating in the refinement of responses and training to undertake more complex tasks. This form of interaction introduces a critical responsibility to ensure ethical and secure usage. 

In terms of AI as a business tool, it is pivotal for organizations to understand the potential harm that arises from a lack of governance and control over the information shared with these platforms. 

The question plaguing IT professionals is: how can one secure this technology without sacrificing its fullest potential? Without cautionary guardrails that balance both security and usability in place, there is a possibility that employees could unintentionally enable AI tools to benefit competitors or become competitors themselves. This is why incorporating an intent-based framework is key to securing AI usage within an organization. 

Utilizing Intent-Based Observability to Comprehend AI Usage

To ensure that AI tools are being managed securely, IT teams must first understand how AI is utilized within an organization. The ability to observe AI interactions is vital for understanding the intentions behind user activities. Because AI prompts don’t come equipped with summaries such as emails or documents, the most efficient way to monitor interactions is through the identification of the user’s intent when coding, drafting contracts, or developing reports containing sensitive information.  

This concept, known as intent-based observability, focuses on specific intents, such as “draft a non-disclosure agreement” or “create a SQL query to retrieve customer data.” These specific intents provide a deep understanding of user activities without the need for a detailed manual evaluation of every single interaction. Upon recognition, intents can be evaluated in real-time and retrospectively, offering security teams a comprehensive view of AI usage across an organization.  

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Achieving Further Security with Policy Implementation  

Once usage patterns are understood, the next move toward securing AI usage involves the development and enforcement of policies. Fine-grained intents offer detailed insights into user behavior and refer to highly specific activities, such as drafting a particular type of contract or writing a snippet of a specific code. Coarse-grained intents, on the other hand, encompass broader categories like coding, contract drafting, or email editing, making them more practical for efficient, real-time decisions. Administrators can utilize these broad categories to determine whether a prompt should be allowed, blocked, or routed to a designated large language model (LLM).

Policy creation should be flexible and context-aware, allowing organizations to define which user groups can perform specific intents. Additionally, policies can be customized based on user location, applications, and the context behind the interaction. Appropriate guardrails, such as warnings, blocks, API calls, or redirection to approved LLMs, can be applied as needed. This layered policy framework guarantees that AI usage is in harmony with organizational goals while also reducing potential risks.

In summary, an intent-based framework allows organizations to securely adopt AI technologies by understanding critical use cases, integrating AI with targeted policies, and providing advanced tools, all while safeguarding sensitive data. By adopting this framework, your organization can rest assured that AI tools are being utilized confidently and, most importantly, securely.