Safeguarding against the Security Risks of Large Language Models

Introduction

Large language models (LLMs) have become a crucial asset for businesses seeking a competitive edge. However, despite their power and complexity, LLMs are vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. Llasso Security, a company focused on tackling these issues, recently launched with $6 million in seed funding from Entrée Capital and Samsung Next.

The Risks of LLMs

LLMs, with their conversational and unstructured nature, can be easily manipulated or exploited. Prompt injection and jailbreaking can expose sensitive information, proprietary algorithms, and confidential details stored in the models. Additionally, data poisoning can introduce bias compromising security, effectiveness, and ethical behavior.

Insufficient validation and handling of output can result in acceptance of insecure data, leading to severe consequences such as cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and remote code execution. Model denial of service can occur when LLMs are overloaded with requests, causing service degradation or shutdown. LLMs’ software supply chains can also be compromised by vulnerabilities in third-party datasets and plugins.

Over-Reliance on LLMs

Over-reliance on LLMs as the sole source of information can result in misinformation and major security events. For example, developers trusting AI-driven tool recommendations may insert malicious code packages, leading to backdoor access for hackers.

Lasso’s Solution

Lasso Security intercepts interactions with LLMs to protect against threats. The platform captures data sent to and received from LLMs, leveraging data classifiers, native language processing, and anomaly detection to identify security risks. Key features include shadow AI discovery, LLM data-flow monitoring, real-time detection and alerting, blocking and end-to-end protection, and a user-friendly dashboard.

Safely Leveraging LLMs

Lasso Security ensures that organizations can leverage the benefits of LLMs securely. By gaining control over LLM-related interactions and creating and enforcing policies, security teams can embrace LLM technologies without compromising their security postures. Blocking the use of LLMs is unsustainable, so organizations must adopt these breakthrough technologies with a dedicated risk plan to thrive in the evolving landscape.

Source: Lasso Security emerges from stealth to wrangle LLM security