AI is increasing the risk that data leaks will occur. In this topic, we’ll take a look at how AI increases the risk of data leaks and what you can do about it.
Data Breach > Data Leakage
AI increases the risk that an organization’s private data will be shared publicly.
Data leakage occurs when private or confidential information is unintentionally shared with an external recipient. It can be either accidental or intentional.
Data leakage is a major contributor to cybercrime and can have enormous costs, with a total annual cost forecast to rise to a trillion USD annually by 2030 [32]. For large organizations, it is estimated that a single data breach could cost multi-millions of dollars [32].
These costs are associated with:
- Responding to the Breach. The costs are associated with the detection & escalation of the breach, notifications, post-breach response and any lost business.
- Regulatory Fines. Regulatory bodies will fine and issue corrective orders when data leaks occur.
How is AI changing things?
AI is increasing the occurrence of data leaks from various sources, including:
- Uninformed Users. Users keen to adopt AI have been known to use the same technologies they use in their personal lives at work [33]. This can result in a user sharing private data with a public AI tool, the impact of which is the publication of that information. Organizations are responsible for ensuring employees know what technology to use and the organizations who have not made efforts to educate their teams on acceptable use of AI are exposed to the risk of being found negligent if a data leak occurs.
- Misconfigured Storage Permissions. For organizations who have relaxed or no content/data management strategy, turning a data-hungry AI technology loose within the organization can result in private, confidential or secret information being shared with all employees.
What can you do about it?
To mitigate the risks associated with data leaks caused by the introduction of AI:
- Define and share thoughtful, easy to understand acceptable use policies for your employees
- Define and implement access control policies before introducing AI tools
- Review and inspect storage systems to identify where AI tools could get unintended access
- Use an AI firewall to ensure prompts and responses are acceptable
In Summary: Users must be made aware of the risks of data leaks and engaged in their mitigation when using AI.
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