AI is Here for Business Users. What Does that Mean for Security?

At the 22nd Annual Information Security Summit in October ’24, Zenity’s Lead Solutions Engineer, Stephen Shanko, delivered a keynote that discussed how in a very short period of time, Generative AI has changed nearly every aspect of how business gets done. Gone are the days where you needed to have a coding background in order to create apps, automate processes, or reduce the need for manual tasks.

Now, emails and communications are sent quicker, code is written faster, and applications are built en masse. Business users are enabled and empowered in ways we never dreamed of even 12 months ago. Thanks to the injection of AI into essentially every business productivity tool, from email to business intelligence to application development, business users are able to get more done without needing IT or dev teams to get involved. However, as is often the case, productivity and ease can come at the expense of security if not controlled properly.

As people are brought closer to technology through the use of Gen AI tools and Copilots, security teams are facing difficult decisions on whether to clamp down on the use of these tools, or staring down increased likelihoods of data leakage and exfiltration. For a long time, security has been seen as a business blocker, but the introduction of Gen AI is forcing a reset on organizations that presents an opportunity for security to act as a business enabler.