AI Security 101: Protecting Your Data When Using AI Platforms

New AI platforms like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini are here to help us with our daily tasks, like programming, finding quick answers, or solving math problems. But it's important to remember to stay safe when using these platforms. Let's discuss some key security measures!

In this article, we'll share a few simple security tips for using AI platforms. We'll also explain why it's important to follow these rules. Also, it is encouraged to share this article with others to help build security awareness.

Typing & Pasting Sensitive Information Into The AI Platforms

By submitting sensitive information into the AI platforms, you are giving away information that should remain confidential. This could be anything from social security numbers, credit card numbers, names, addresses, etc. Once any of these information gets submitted into the AI platform chat, it is now stored on their database. What this means is that this information can now be accessible to the companies, or potentially anyone who knows how to extract this information from these AI platforms. So, make sure to avoid uploading or typing in any sensitive information to be submitted into any of the AI platforms.

Proprietary Information

When it comes to working at a company you probably heard about AI platforms, and how useful it can be to speed up your workflow. It sounds very enticing, but most people don’t stop to take a moment to fully understand what can happen if you don’t have a security mindset. It might sound beneficial to upload proprietary code into the AI platform to help you find bug issues in your code, or to upload that sensitive contract or spreadsheet for AI to speed up the process of creating something for you. When this proprietary information gets uploaded the AI platforms use that data to enhance their ability to do better in these areas. So, if someone wanted the AI platform to help build code for something that is proprietary it can if it had that data uploaded to the platform at some point.

Securing Your User Account On The AI Platforms

Having a user account on the AI platforms is nice, but it is also important to make sure that your accounts are secure too. By having a strong password at least 15 characters in length with uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters. By doing this it helps your account to be more secure as well as including Multifactor Authentication (MFA). This will help reduce the risk of your user account from being compromised. You can also reference Basic Security Practices to Have article for more information.

After reading this article, you should now be familiar with the best practices for using AI platforms. From refraining from inputting or uploading sensitive information to securing your user accounts with strong passwords and utilizing Multifactor Authentication (MFA), following these guidelines ensures optimal security practices.

Always Check the Privacy Policy

Before using any AI platform, make sure to check their privacy statement. This will explain how they handle your data and what information they collect. By doing this you are now able to know how they would handle your data if they were to ingest it.