Firewall for AI to the rescue: Responding to the call for an adaptive, context-aware protection that AI security entails, Akamai’s Firewall for AI offers to scan for and respond to threats facing AI applications, LLMs, and AI-driven APIs. The solution claims real-time AI threat detection, along with risk mitigation features such as filtering AI outputs to prevent toxic content, hallucinations, and unauthorized data leaks.”We believe all global businesses will need security tools specific to LLMs and AI interactions,” said Rupesh Choksi, senior vice president and general manager, Application Security, Akamai. “WAFs remain foundational, but AI introduces a new class of threats that require specialized protection.”According to him, a few early adopters of Akamai’s Firewall for AI, who said they didn’t use AI at their company, discovered many API calls made to LLMs in a proof of concept (POC) run.Weighing in on the offering, Grady said, “Solutions like this are targeted at GenAI being used for internally developed applications. I think it’s natural to expect that over time these capabilities will become tightly integrated, if not completely incorporated into traditional application security tools such as WAF.”
A move towards a dedicated security stack?: Talking about the general direction AI security is headed, ESG’s Grady said, “The AI space is moving so fast, is so different, and represents both a significant opportunity and risk. It makes sense that we’ve seen a rash of startups as well as new products from existing vendors to address the issue. But over time, as AI becomes foundational to everything we do, those security controls have to be better integrated across the stack- whether it’s for secure access, application security, data security, identity, or anything else.”Litan, too, does not see such offerings forming a standalone security market. “I see it as incremental and important functionality that existing security vendors must build or acquire to remain relevant and competitive.”Apart from Akamai, we have already seen a handful of strategic moves focused at AI security, like Palo Alto acquiring Protect-AI to address AI-specific security risks, and Cisco acquiring Robust Intelligence to improve threat protection and AI traffic visibility.Recently, vendors like ZScaler and Securiti have also natively added functionalities targeted at securing AI workflows.Both Grady and Litan agreed on the positive impact the AI regulatory shifts, like the EU AI Act, are expected to have on the demand for these kinds of tools. “Regulated sectors like finance and healthcare are already governed by strict data privacy laws (e.g., CPRA, PCI DSS), and we will see accelerated adoption (of such tools) in those industries to avoid legal and reputational risks,” Litan added.
First seen on csoonline.com
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