A Secure Vision for Our AI-Driven Future
Maximizing the opportunities of our AI-driven future is a whole-of-society imperative, and Palo Alto Networks applauds the White House’s recently released AI Action Plan for providing a roadmap to do just that.
It’s no secret that AI development and deployment are accelerating exponentially, bringing endless possibilities to reimagine our digital way of life. At Palo Alto Networks, we’ve been on the frontlines of this transformation. In fact, we first introduced machine learning capabilities as part of our malware protection offering 10 years ago and now deploy over 30 products that leverage AI, with many more in development.
We sit here today at a critical inflection point for global AI adoption. The U.S. government’s most recent AI inventory data shows a year-over-year increase in AI use cases from 710 to 2,133. Our recently released State of GenAI Report highlights that GenAI traffic increased 890% over the last year, with the average organization leveraging 66 GenAI applications.
While the aggressive deployment of AI tools enables incredible efficiency and productivity gains, this rapidly expanding AI attack surface also introduces novel security considerations (e.g., data poisoning and prompt injection attacks) that must be accounted for.
We are particularly encouraged to see these provisions.
Key Provisions — AI Action Plan
Promote Secure-By-Design AI Technologies and Applications
AI systems are susceptible to some classes of adversarial inputs (e.g., data poisoning and privacy attacks), which puts their performance at risk. The U.S. government has a responsibility to ensure the AI systems it relies on (particularly for national security applications) are protected against spurious or malicious inputs. While much work has been done to advance the field of AI assurance, promoting resilient and secure AI development and deployment should be a core activity of the U.S. government.
Protect Commercial and Government AI Innovations
Maintaining American leadership in AI necessitates that the U.S. government work closely with industry to appropriately balance the dissemination of cutting-edge AI technologies with national security concerns. It is also essential for the U.S. government to effectively address security risks to American AI companies, talent, intellectual property and systems.
Bolster Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity
As AI systems advance in coding and software engineering capabilities, their utility as tools of both cyber offense and defense will expand. Maintaining a robust defensive posture will be especially important for owners of critical infrastructure, many of whom operate with limited financial resources. Fortunately, AI systems themselves can be excellent defensive tools. With continued adoption of AI-enabled cyber defensive tools, providers of critical infrastructure can stay ahead of emerging threats. However, the use of AI in cyber and critical infrastructure exposes those AI systems to adversarial threats. All use of AI in safety-critical or homeland security applications should entail the use of secure-by-design, robust and resilient AI systems that are instrumented to detect performance shifts, and alert to potential malicious activities like data poisoning or adversarial example attacks.
Palo Alto Networks Commitment to Secure AI by Design
As AI infrastructure is rapidly deployed, Palo Alto Networks is committed to leading the charge to provide seamless and scalable security for this expanding attack surface. Across the AI applications, agents, models and data in an enterprise’s IT stack, security leaders need the ability to:
- Discover – Gain a clear understanding of AI assets being developed across the enterprise.
- Assess – Continuously assess security, safety and compliance risks of AI apps, agents, models and datasets, across the supply chain and runtime.
- Protect – Detect and prevent risks detected in the supply chain and runtime.
Taken together, this Secure AI by Design approach will enable public and private enterprises to deploy AI bravely, without trading innovation for risk. We’re pleased that our acquisition of Protect AI, a leader in AI application and model security, recently closed, further bolstering our ability to provide best-in-class security across the entire AI lifecycle.
AI innovation and secure deployment requires people, processes and technology working in concert. To that end, Palo Alto Networks is a proud signer of the Pledge to America’s Youth. Led by the great work of our Cybersecurity Academy, we are integrating AI into our core curriculum and offering hands-on AI-in-action labs.
We look forward to working with the Trump Administration, other governments around the world and all interested stakeholders, to make our secure vision for an AI-driven future a reality.
The post A Secure Vision for Our AI-Driven Future appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.
