A Practitioner’s Guide to
Secure AI Implementation
Seven critical security concepts from “The CISO’s Guide to
AI-Powered Security” that every AI practitioner must address.
As AI is being streamlined in our daily lives. Whether it is to improve employee
productivity, to increase the speed to perform a repetitive task or to improve
security of an organization from modern day threats, every practitioner in security,
SOC, IT operations and developer teams is thinking about AI.
1 Employees are using unsanctioned GenAI tools, creating “Shadow AI”
Challenge: Takeaway for Practitioners:
This introduces massive risk by potentially You cannot secure what you cannot see.
feeding sensitive corporate data into Work with security teams to gain visibility
unsanctioned, untrusted models without into AI application usage. Advocate for
any security oversight or governance. sanctioned, secure tools and educate
colleagues on the risks of using public AI
with proprietary data.
2 Integrate existing applications with AI using APIs
Challenge: Takeaway for Practitioners:
AI introduces new attack vectors across the Think beyond securing just the final
entire lifecycle not just in the final application. Your security posture must
application. Attack vectors exist in the cover data sourcing, the training
training data (poisoning), the model
environment, third-party model integrity,
itself (extraction), and the supply
and continuous testing for vulnerabilities.
chain (vulnerable open-source
components).
3 Use open source and third-party components for faster development cycle
Challenge: Takeaway for Practitioners:
Your AI is only as secure as its weakest Rigorously vet all third-party and open-
open-source component. The data source components. Use software
emphasizes the heavy reliance on open- composition analysis (SCA) tools and
source models, libraries, and datasets.
maintain a software bill of materials (SBOM)
Each element is a potential entry
for your AI/ML projects. Don't implicitly
point for vulnerabilities,
trust pre-trained models.
malicious code, or data
with embedded
biases.
4 Stay up to date with modern day threats
Challenge: Takeaway for Practitioners:
Classic vulnerabilities have new AI-specific Familiarize yourself with the OWASP Top
equivalents, like Prompt Injection and 10 for LLMs. Treat all user-provided inputs
require new approaches. The OWASP Top as potentially malicious and implement
10 for Large Language Model Applications robust input validation and output encoding
provides a formal framework for to mitigate these known risks.
understanding that inputs can
be weaponized to manipulate
your model and bypass
security filters.
5 Protect your AI / LLM / SLM models
Challenge: Takeaway for Practitioners:
Existing network firewalls are not enough. Don't build in a vacuum. Engage with your
Effective AI security requires implementing organization's security and governance
strong, centralized guardrails that provide teams early. Adhere to established
real-time inline policies for data handling, guardrails for data privacy, model testing,
acceptable use, and risk management that and security checks to ensure your
apply to all AI development and innovations are built on a
deployment. secure foundation.
6 Attackers are using GenAI to create more sophisticated and evasive threats
Challenge: Takeaway for Practitioners:
Adversaries are now leveraging the same AI The tools you are building with are also
technology to author polymorphic malware being used to create attacks against you.
that evades traditional detection and to This elevates the need for zero trust
craft hyper-realistic phishing attacks at an security principles, as AI-powered threats
unprecedented scale. can more easily bypass legacy defenses and
manipulate employees.
Your security awareness is
more critical than ever.
7 Generate content to help improve employee productivity
Challenge: Takeaway for Practitioners:
AI models can inadvertently generate Understand the provenance and licensing of
content that infringes on copyrights or your training data. Implement output
exposes proprietary data. There is a legal filtering and monitoring to detect and block
and reputational risk that a model, trained the generation of potentially infringing
on vast and varied datasets, might content or the regurgitation of
reproduce copyrighted material or
sensitive training data before it
leak sensitive information it was
reaches the end-user.
trained on, creating significant
liability for the organization.
To Learn More:
As you are implementing AI in your environments, keep a close eye
on these 7 concepts. To learn more about these, please visit us here.
L earn M ore
About Zscaler
Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) accelerates digital transformation so customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. The Zscaler Zero Trust
Exchange™ platform protects thousands of customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in
any location. Distributed across more than 150 data centers globally, the SSE-based Zero Trust Exchange™ is the world’s largest in-line cloud
security platform. Learn more at [Link] or follow us on Twitter @zscaler.
© 2026 Zscaler, Inc. All rights reserved. Zscaler™ and other trademarks listed at [Link]/legal/trademarks are either (i) registered trademarks or service marks or (ii)
trademarks or service marks of Zscaler, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Any other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.