As generative AI continues to transform the business world, security concerns remain the primary obstacle to its widespread adoption.

The era of AI is here, reshaping industries and driving unprecedented value. But this rapid technological shift presents a dual challenge: securing your AI investments against today’s sophisticated threats and preparing for the disruptive force of quantum computing.

For organisations, the foundation of this progress—your data—is more valuable and vulnerable than ever before. At CREAPLUS, we understand that safeguarding your innovations requires a strategy that is both robust and agile.

The dual threat to your AI success

Generative AI (GenAI) is transforming business potential, yet security risks remain the top obstacle to adoption. When selecting a Large Language Model (LLM), an astonishing 58% of organisations cite privacy and security as their top concern, closely followed by accuracy, quality of response (53%), and cost (52%).

Key vulnerabilities in the AI lifecycle demand immediate attention:

• Data Poisoning: Malicious actors corrupt training data, undermining your model’s reliability from the start.
• Model Theft: Proprietary algorithms—your valuable intellectual property—can be stolen, handing a competitive edge to rivals.
• Confidentiality Breaches: Sensitive training and inference data, including PII and financial records, are at risk of exposure.

Beyond these immediate challenges, a massive, long-term threat is fast approaching: the quantum computer. Expected to achieve cryptographic relevance within the next decade, these machines will have the power to shatter today’s encryption standards. This is not a distant problem; adversaries are already engaging in “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” (HNDL) attacks, stockpiling encrypted sensitive data with the intent to break it once a powerful quantum computer is available.

Crypto-agile framework: Securing today and tomorrow

To confidently embrace the transformative power of AI, you need a forward-looking security strategy. Utimaco’s crypto-agile approach provides a future-proof framework that protects your digital assets without disrupting current operations.

The core of this strategy is a hybrid cryptographic model, which seamlessly combines today’s robust algorithms with the new, NIST-standardised Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms. This enables you to:

• Protect long-term data against HNDL attacks.
• Maintain interoperability with existing systems.
• Create a smooth, seamless migration path to a fully quantum-resistant future.

The foundation of trust: Hardware root of trust and KMS

Effective AI security cannot rely on software alone. It requires a foundational anchor of trust: the Hardware Security Module (HSM).

Utimaco HSMs secure the entire AI lifecycle by providing a hardened, tamper-proof environment for all cryptographic keys and operations:

• Data Ingestion: Encrypts sensitive data at its source before it enters the training pipeline.
• Model Training: Protects the keys used for encryption, preventing unauthorized access and data poisoning.
• Model Deployment: Uses digital signatures to verify the integrity of AI models, ensuring they have not been tampered with.
• Inference: Safeguards your model’s intellectual property from theft and protects the confidentiality of real-time processed data.

Furthermore, Centralised Key Management Solutions (KMS) are essential, providing a “single pane of glass” to manage all keys utilised across your AI ecosystem, adding control and ensuring reliable key management at every stage of the cryptographic key lifecycle.

Beyond encryption: Protecting data in use with confidential computing

Encryption protects data at rest and in transit, but what about when it is actively being processed? This is where confidential computing closes a critical security gap.

Confidential computing uses hardware-based secure enclaves to create isolated environments where data and applications can run, protecting them even from the underlying cloud administrators. For AI, this is vital: models can be trained and run inference on sensitive data without ever exposing that data in an unencrypted state. Utimaco enhances this technology by using HSMs to secure the cryptographic keys and verify the integrity of the secure enclave before any workload is launched.

Your next steps for AI and quantum resilience

Security and utility are not exclusive—with GenAI, they are more intertwined than ever. By implementing a robust, crypto-agile strategy now, you can mitigate today’s risks and ensure long-term resilience against the quantum threat.

Utimaco provides the tools and expertise to help you navigate this complex landscape. We recommend you take action now:

1. Assess Your Readiness: Understand your current security posture against both GenAI vulnerabilities and the coming quantum threat.
2. Develop a Crypto-Agile Roadmap: Plan your smooth migration to quantum-safe standards.
3. Implement a Hardware Root of Trust and Key Management Solution: Secure your entire AI lifecycle with industry-leading HSMs and KMS.

Would you like to explore how Utimaco’s solutions, provided by CREAPLUS, can help your organisation implement a robust, future-proof AI security strategy?