Secure GenAI Chatbots Safe & Efficient GenAI Conversations
How to enable better, safer conversations between humans and AI
Learn moreThe Hype Cycle is Over: GenAI is Now Part of Your Organization
Ever since ChatGPT made GenAI explode in the mainstream, people are still talking about - and talking to - AI chatbots.
From developers to marketers, knowledge workers increasingly rely on conversations with their favorite GenAI tools to answer critical questions and speed up projects. Those conversations are driving real progress and unprecedented efficiency gains across virtually every industry.
But each of them is also an opportunity for innovative cyber criminals. And the threats (the ones we know about, and the ones we have yet to discover) are dire. Gartner has already predicted one death by Chatbot by 2027.
The AI Frontier: GenAI Chatbots Your Employees
Probably Use Already
ChatGPT
Claude AI
Gemini
Microsoft Copilot
Why Everyone Loves Using Chatbots & GenAI
24/7 Availability
GenAI chatbots can operate around the clock, providing continuous support to users & customers without downtime.
Cost Efficiency
By automating routine tasks and inquiries, GenAI chatbots reduce the need for human intervention, leading to cost savings.
Scalability
Chatbots can handle multiple interactions simultaneously, ideal for businesses with high customer engagement or workloads.
Productivity
Developers can significantly reduce the time spent on specific tasks, with similar efficiency gains observed in writing and content creation.
Consistency
GenAI enables standardization at scale, helping organizations to align their output with established quality criteria more easily.
Data Insights
By processing data from a huge range of sources and interactions, chatbots can deliver deep insights in just moments.
Welcome to the Wild West of GenAI Chatbots
GenAI Chatbots should be a win-win for employees and businesses alike. And it can be, but there
are serious dangers to be aware of
Without proper guardrails around the way data is handled and stored, chatbots can expose sensitive information. Another source of risk is the model’s integration with third-party platforms. Malicious actors are constantly looking for opportunities such as weak encryption, improper configuration, and lax authentication protocols.
Organizations should do the same, and view chatbots through the eyes of attackers, and implement measures to counteract them. Continual monitoring of chatbot interactions is crucial to preventing both inadvertent leaks and malicious attacks.
A chatbot that has more access rights or permissions than it needs is a major security risk. This happens when chatbots integrate with many different systems, databases, or APIs, but without adequate restrictions. This lack of proper access control gives them the ability to touch sensitive and confidential data.
For example, a customer service chatbot might receive broad access to a customer database. The database may include general information, which is appropriate for the chatbot to access. But it may also contain more privileged information, like financial records, which should remain invisible to chatbots.
It is important to be cognizant of the fact AI models are often trained on data that is collected from unsanitized online sources. What this means is that the models can become easy targets for data poisoning attacks, whereby adversaries compromise the training dataset by injecting malicious samples into the AI model.
AI package hallucination is a type of attack technique that leverages GenAI tools to spread malicious packages that do not exist, based on model outputs that are provided to the end-user.
Integrating a hallucinated package into a production environment can pose a very serious security risk to the organization. Based on research performed by Lasso Security, it was found that hallucinations are far from rare, with 24.2% produced by GPT4, 22.2% by GPT3.5, 64.5% by Gemini, and more.
Prompt Injection attacks occur when an attacker inserts malicious code into a system through an input field or command. In the context of chatbots, this can be done via crafted user inputs that manipulate the bot's responses or access restricted areas. This type of attack can compromise data integrity, steal sensitive information, and disrupt chatbot services.
Direct prompt injections and indirect prompt injections are the two basic categories into which prompt injection attacks can be generally categorized. Both direct and indirect prompt injections pose significant threats to GenAI application systems, especially as these technologies become more integrated into critical applications.
Chatbots that are trained on copyrighted materials without the necessary authorization pose a serious risk of infringing on intellectual property and copyrights. For example, they may generate content that reproduces or imitates protected IP. This has already resulted in high-profile legal disputes, with potentially disastrous financial consequences.
In many cases, the first casualty of a cyber attack - and the one that takes the longest to recover - is brand reputation. Consumers and regulators have increasingly high expectations of organizations. A failure to secure AI models like chatbots is an unforced error that will be remembered long after an organization implements the steps to modernize its security infrastructure.
When data leaks, privacy violations, or other attacks occur due to vulnerabilities in GenAI chatbots, organizations face unprecedented risks of falling victim to malicious threat actors or legal liability.
Data privacy in the age of GenAI Chatbots
To be effective, chatbots have to collect, process and store large amounts of data - some of it personal. For cyber attackers, this data represents a reservoir of information to extract and exploit.
To do this, attackers can target a chatbot’s actual database, either through an attack or by gaining unauthorized access. These risks are compounded by the fact that chatbots can and often do share data with third parties, creating even more exposure to risk.
In some cases, the risk comes from inside an organization itself: research suggests that around 6% of employees have shared confidential information with chatbots.
All of this makes it imperative to secure GenAI chatbots - as well as the software supply chain - against a growing list of risks.
Navigating new risks and regulations
As the risks associated with GenAI chatbots multiply, governments and regulatory bodies are stepping in with new tools to protect businesses and consumers.
While this proactive approach bodes well for the future, it also places new burdens on organizations, requiring them to stay compliant with evolving regulations like the EU AI Act and existing legislation such as GDPR.
Compliance and Regulatory Risks
Failure to comply with cybersecurity regulations when deploying AI solutions can have serious repercussions for organizations. These potential impacts include:
- Regulatory penalties, either through individual litigation or fines.
- Loss of customer trust, which is notoriously difficult to regain.
- Competitive disadvantages, as customers may gravitate toward competitors perceived to take security more seriously.
How Lasso Security can Secure Human and AI conversation?
With Lasso Security, the C-Suite can finally solve these thorny security challenges, without sacrificing any of the efficiency gains that their organizations are already making with GenAI chatbots.
Lasso for GenAI Chatbots is a browser extension that integrates easily into every employee’s browser. It monitors every data point, at rest and in transit, instantly and accurately.
When a user brings sensitive data into a chat where the information doesn’t belong, the extension blocks it immediately, reigning in insecure usage of GenAI chatbots while still allowing users to continue conversing with them.
Lasso’s solution is easy to deploy and easy to use. Onboarding can be completed quickly, without disrupting employees’ regular workflows.
And an intuitive SaaS dashboard with unique, engaging UX gives leaders complete oversight. What was once an organization’s “Shadow LLM” becomes a transparent view of who is using which GenAI chatbots, and how.
The Lasso Secure GenAI Chatbots
Monitor
GenAI chatbot usage, always & everywhere
Protects
sensitive information from disclosure
Prepares
companies for the future of AI regulation
The bottom line
With the frequency and sophistication of attacks increasing, no organization can afford the tradeoff between developer productivity and code security.With dedicated LLM security, Lasso Secure for Code Assistant eliminates the need for that tradeoff altogether. Developers can now have the freedom to capture all the benefits of large language models for their coding, and to do so securely, responsibly, and disruption free.
Lasso Secure AI Code Assistant FAQ
A secure GenAI Chatbots is any AI-powered Chatbot or LLM that can provide secure and compliant conversational experiences. Lasso Security for GenAI Chatbots incorporate advanced security features to protect data and ensure adherence to privacy regulations.
Lasso Security for GenAI Chatbots can be deployed on your browser within minutes through an easy-to-install extension. The plugin defends against a wide range of chatbot security risks.
Lasso Security enables organizations to deploy and use secure GenAI Chatbots in full compliance with global data protection standards. Our solution includes robust encryption, data anonymization, and regular audits in line with chatbot security best practices.
Lasso Security offers hands-on support and technical assistance, troubleshooting, and regular updates to ensure optimal performance and security.
The first challenge is to gain full oversight on an organization’s use of chatbots - the so-called Shadow AI or Shadow LLM problem. Other challenges include maintaining strict data privacy standards in line with both regulations and customer expectations.
Lasso Security stays updated with the latest threats through continuous monitoring of the cybersecurity landscape, and regularly updating our systems to counter new threats. We are also at the forefront of industry conversations about the evolving threat landscape for LLMs and GenAI Chatbots.