Start with an AI Security Risk Assessment
You've sketched your AI architecture and you're ready to build. Before writing a single line of code, run an AI security risk assessment. This uncovers hidden vulnerabilities early, saving your team from rebuilding entire systems later. Allie stresses that without knowing your risks, you can't mitigate them effectively.
Consider a common pitfall: picking an API for frontier models that's not HIPAA compliant. If you're targeting healthcare, you'll face a full teardown once compliance hits. A quick assessment flags this upfront, letting you choose compliant alternatives and protect your precious engineering time. Tools like Verde, which Allie is building, automate this by scanning your codebase, generating architecture diagrams, and spotting risks in seconds to minutes.
This isn't a one-off task. AI evolves fast, so scan regularly-every few days-to keep pace with code changes and model updates. Early assessment turns security into a business accelerator, ensuring you're building the right thing from the start.
Master the Lethal Trifecta for AI Agent Security
At the heart of AI risks lies the lethal trifecta: untrusted content, external communication capabilities, and access to sensitive data. When these converge in your AI agents, exploits like data exfiltration become easy. Allie explains how prompt injections or indirect attacks, such as those via GitHub issues, can trigger this combo, leaking private info through PRs or remote pings.
Don't over-rely on LLM guardrails-they're overhyped and bypassable with tricks like hidden characters. Instead, layer defenses: sandbox high-risk functions like coding agents to limit blast radius with ephemeral credentials, add input/output validators, and enforce context-aware permissions. For coding tools, integrate pre-commit scans to catch vulnerabilities from AI-generated code.
These steps make your AI more reliable too, not just secure. By isolating agents and verifying outputs, you reduce non-deterministic failures, improving performance while standing out against copycat products flooding the market.
Verde and Beyond: Automate Trust and Skip Costly Audits
Allie transitioned her consulting insights into Verde, a tool that scans codebases continuously and generates tailored remediation tasks. It prioritizes high-impact fixes unique to your stack-like sandboxing email-processing agents or scanning open-source models for deserialization attacks-then showcases your progress in a public trust center.
This beats point-in-time audits like SOC 2, which lack AI-specific depth and quickly outdated amid rapid changes. Enterprises still ask for SOC 2, but pair it with AI security proof: demonstrate controls active for months via Verde's dashboard. For regulated sectors like fintech or healthcare, this preparation unblocks sales cycles flooded with AI questionnaires.
Verde fits AI-native startups up to 200 employees, blending security with engineering gains for revenue-generating AI. It's not one-size-fits-all; it adapts to your industry and buyers, proving trust continuously.
