AI security encompasses the practices, technologies, and frameworks that protect AI systems from attack, misuse, and unintended behavior, while also governing how AI tools are used within organizations. It has two distinct dimensions: securing AI systems themselves (protecting models from adversarial attacks, data poisoning, and theft) and securing the enterprise from AI-related risks (managing Shadow AI, preventing data leakage to AI tools, and governing AI agent behavior).
Threats to AI systems include adversarial machine learning attacks (inputs crafted to fool models), model inversion (extracting training data from model outputs), model theft (replicating proprietary models through repeated querying), data poisoning (corrupting training data to degrade model performance or introduce backdoors), and prompt injection (manipulating model behavior through malicious inputs).
Enterprise AI security risks center on the proliferation of AI tools employees use without oversight. According to Gartner (2025), 68% of employees use unsanctioned AI tools, exposing organizations to data leakage, compliance violations, and security vulnerabilities in third-party AI platforms. The IBM Cost of Data Breach Report 2024 found that AI-related incidents cost organizations an average of $4.88 million per breach.
Key AI security controls include: AI tool discovery and inventory (knowing what AI is being used across the organization); acceptable use policies with enforcement mechanisms; data loss prevention (DLP) for AI interactions; AI agent governance frameworks for autonomous systems; continuous monitoring of AI usage for policy violations; regular AI red teaming to identify vulnerabilities; and incident response playbooks specifically designed for AI security events.
Regulatory frameworks are increasingly incorporating AI security requirements. The EU AI Act mandates security testing for high-risk AI systems, the NIST AI RMF includes security as a core consideration, and sector regulators including APRA (Australia), FCA (UK), and OCC (US) are issuing AI risk management guidance for financial services.