Introduction

Large Language Models (LLMs) have rapidly transitioned from experimental innovations to key assets in diverse business sectors. These advanced AI systems have become essential for a variety of tasks, such as customer service and automating content creation. However, their ability to process and generate human-like text also introduces significant security challenges.

Yes, LLMs can boost operational capabilities, but they also expose companies to new security risks, including data poisoning and prompt injection attacks. The growing reliance on these models requires different approaches to managing data risks.

The deployment of LLMs raises important questions about data privacy, security and governance. A recent survey by Expert.ai shows that 71.3% of respondents believe these to the number 1 challenge in enterprise LLM adoption [1].

As public awareness and regulatory demands increase, businesses must prioritise secure and ethical practices in their AI operations. This article will explore the specific security challenges posed by LLMs and discuss practical strategies that businesses can employ to mitigate these risks effectively.

Understanding Threat Modelling for LLMs

Fundamentals of Threat Modelling for LLM Security

Threat modelling is a systematic approach used to identify, assess and address potential security threats to Large Language Models (LLMs) before they can be exploited. This protects LLMs from potential security breaches and contributes to their safe use in business settings.

Key Frameworks for Threat Modelling LLMs

Two principal frameworks used extensively in threat modelling are STRIDE and DREAD:

STRIDE: This framework categorises threats into six critical types:

• Spoofing: An attacker assumes the identity of another user, potentially gaining unauthorised access to data or functionalities.
• Tampering: Malicious alterations to data or processes can compromise the integrity of the LLM's outputs.
• Repudiation: Actions that can be denied by users, causing issues in tracking and accountability.
• Information Disclosure: Exposure of sensitive information to unauthorised entities, leading to data breaches.
• Denial of Service (DoS): Attacks that disrupt service availability, preventing legitimate users from accessing the system.
• Elevation of Privilege: Unauthorised users gain higher access levels than intended, leading to potential misuse of the system.

DREAD: This model evaluates the severity of threats based on five factors:

• Damage Potential: The extent of harm a threat can cause if exploited.
• Reproducibility: The ease with which an attack can be repeated.
• Exploitability: The effort required to exploit the vulnerability.
• Affected Users: The number of users impacted by the threat.
• Discoverability: The likelihood of discovering the vulnerability.

Applying STRIDE and DREAD to Secure LLMs

To effectively apply these frameworks, businesses must follow a structured process:

Identify Assets and Entry Points

Determine the critical assets that need protection and identify all potential entry points where an attacker could interact with the system. This includes data inputs, interfaces and connected systems.

Enumerate Threats

Use STRIDE to list potential threats for each asset and entry point. For instance, consider how spoofing could allow unauthorised access or how tampering might alter the LLM's training data.

Assess Risks

Evaluate each identified threat using the DREAD model. Assign scores for each factor in DREAD to prioritise threats based on their potential impact and likelihood.

How Threat Modelling Identifies Vulnerabilities Like Data Poisoning

Threat modelling plays a critical role in identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities such as data poisoning. In the context of LLMs, data poisoning [2] involves altering the training data to produce biased or incorrect outputs. This kind of vulnerability can significantly impact the reliability and decision-making capabilities of AI systems in business. 

Through threat modelling, businesses can detect potential pathways for data poisoning, assess the risk associated with these vulnerabilities and implement controls to prevent malicious data manipulation. This supports the integrity and accuracy of LLM outputs, which is fundamental for maintaining trust and operational effectiveness in AI-driven processes.

Risk Analysis of Common LLM Threats

Identifying and Assessing the Risks to Enhance LLM Security

As businesses increasingly adopt Large Language Models (LLMs), understanding the common threats these systems face and assessing their impact and likelihood becomes crucial. A detailed risk analysis helps prioritise security measures effectively.

Common Threats to LLMs

Prompt Injection

• Description: Attackers manipulate the model by injecting crafted prompts to produce desired outputs. This can lead to unauthorised actions or data leakage.
• Impact: High. Unauthorised actions could result in significant data breaches, exposing sensitive information and causing reputational damage.
• Likelihood: Medium to High. As LLMs are widely accessible and prompt injection techniques become more sophisticated, the likelihood of such attacks increases.

SQL Injection

• Description: LLMs interfaced with databases may be vulnerable to SQL injection, where malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution, potentially allowing attackers to dump the database contents.
• Impact: High. Successful SQL injection can lead to the compromise of entire databases, resulting in extensive data loss and financial damage.
• Likelihood: Medium. Although well-known, SQL injection remains a common threat due to poor input validation practices.

Data Memorisation

• Description: LLMs may unintentionally memorise and reproduce sensitive information from their training data, including personal data such as phone numbers, code snippets and conversations.
• Impact: High. The leakage of sensitive information can lead to significant privacy breaches and compliance issues.
• Likelihood: Medium. While this threat depends on the nature of the training data, adversarial attacks have demonstrated its feasibility.

Inference of Sensitive Information

• Description: LLMs can infer sensitive personal information not explicitly included in their training data by combining data from various sources. This includes inferring attributes like location, gender, age and political leanings.
• Impact: High. Incorrect or unwanted inferences can lead to privacy violations, bias and discrimination.
• Likelihood: Medium to High. This is a significant risk given the large volumes of data used for training.

Jailbreaking

• Description: This involves bypassing the restrictions placed by developers on what the LLM can generate, potentially leading to the production of harmful or restricted content.
• Impact: Medium to High. Jailbreaking can cause the LLM to produce harmful or inappropriate content, damaging the brand's reputation and leading to potential regulatory scrutiny.
• Likelihood: Medium. While it requires specific expertise, the increasing knowledge and resources available to attackers raise the likelihood.

Compositional Injection Attacks

• Description: These involve composing inputs that exploit the model's multi-step reasoning or contextual handling capabilities to cause unintended actions or disclosures.
• Impact: High. Compositional injection attacks can manipulate the model's outputs in complex ways, potentially leading to severe data breaches or system manipulations.
• Likelihood: Medium to High. The complexity of these attacks means they are less common, but as understanding and techniques improve, their likelihood grows.

Analysing the Impact and Likelihood of Each Threat

To effectively manage these threats, it is essential to evaluate both their impact and likelihood systematically:

• Assessing Impact: Determine the potential damage each threat could cause, such as financial loss, reputational damage, operational disruption, or regulatory non-compliance. High-impact threats require immediate and robust mitigation measures.
• Evaluating Likelihood: Estimate the probability of each threat occurring, considering factors like system complexity, exposure level, and existing security measures. Understanding the likelihood helps prioritize threats that are more probable and require urgent attention.

Prioritising Risks

Combining the impact and likelihood assessments enables businesses to prioritise threats effectively:

• High Impact, High Likelihood: Immediate and comprehensive mitigation strategies are needed.
• High Impact, Medium Likelihood: Significant resources should be allocated to prevent these threats, even if they are less frequent.
• Medium Impact, High Likelihood: These threats should be addressed with effective security measures due to their frequency.
• Low Impact, Low Likelihood: These can be managed with standard security practices and monitored regularly.

Thorough risk analysis and prioritisation based on detailed assessments can help businesses implement more effective security strategies for their AI-driven processes. This approach can reduce the potential impact of attacks and the likelihood of their occurrence, safeguarding the organisation and fostering trust and reliability.

Mitigation Strategies

Proactive Measures to Secure LLMs Against Common Threats

After identifying and assessing the risks associated with Large Language Models (LLMs), businesses need to implement mitigation strategies to address these threats effectively. Here, we outline practical measures to safeguard LLMs from the identified threats.

Input Validation and Filtering

Purpose: To prevent malicious inputs from being processed by the LLM, mitigating risks such as prompt injection and SQL injection.

Implementation:

• Develop comprehensive input validation rules to check the integrity and format of incoming data.
• Use whitelisting techniques to allow only expected and safe inputs.
• Deploy advanced natural language processing algorithms to detect and filter out suspicious or harmful inputs.

Sandboxing Environments

Purpose: To isolate the LLM's processes and prevent any malicious activity from affecting the broader system.

Implementation:

• Create controlled environments where LLMs can operate independently of critical systems.
• Regularly update and test sandbox environments to ensure they effectively contain potential threats.
• Use containerisation technologies like Docker to facilitate easy deployment and isolation of LLMs.

Continuous Monitoring and Anomaly Detection

Purpose: To detect unusual patterns or behaviours that may indicate a security threat, enabling rapid response and mitigation.

Implementation:

• Implement real-time monitoring tools to oversee all interactions and activities involving the LLM.
• Use machine learning models to identify anomalies and flag potential security incidents.
• Establish automated alert systems to notify security teams of detected anomalies for prompt investigation.

Regular Security Audits and Updates

Purpose: To maintain the security posture of LLMs by identifying and addressing new vulnerabilities and ensuring compliance with security standards.

Implementation:

• Schedule periodic security audits to review and assess the effectiveness of current security measures.
• Regularly update the LLM and its supporting infrastructure to patch known vulnerabilities and enhance security features.
• Conduct penetration testing to simulate potential attacks and improve the resilience of the LLM.

Implementing Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs)

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of LLMs on data privacy and ensure compliance with relevant regulations.

Implementation:

• Conduct PIAs during the design and deployment phases of LLM projects to identify and mitigate privacy risks.
• Involve stakeholders from legal, compliance and data protection teams in the assessment process.
• Document the findings and action plans from PIAs to demonstrate compliance and accountability.

While some measures protect against specific threats, as a whole, they build a foundation for ongoing security management and support the safe and responsible use of AI technologies in business operations.

Use Case: Enhancing Security and Privacy in E-Commerce Customer Service Using LLMs

Background

An e-commerce company has integrated a Large Language Model (LLM) to handle customer service inquiries through chatbots. This AI system personalises interactions by accessing customer data, purchase history and browsing patterns. While the LLM enhances customer experience, it also poses security and privacy risks such as exposure of sensitive data and potential misuse of the system through injection attacks.

Challenges

1. Data Privacy: Ensuring that the LLM handles sensitive customer data (e.g., payment details, personal information) in compliance with GDPR and other privacy regulations.
2. Security Threats:
   1. Prompt Injection: Malicious actors could manipulate the LLM to retrieve or leak personal data by crafting specific prompts.
   2. Compositional Injection Attacks: Hackers might use complex queries to trick the LLM into executing unintended actions, potentially leading to data breaches.

Implementation of Mitigation Strategies

Step 1: Input Validation and Filtering

• Action: Deploy advanced natural language processing techniques to detect and block malicious inputs.
• Outcome: This prevents prompt injection and other types of injection attacks, ensuring that only safe and expected inputs are processed by the LLM.

Step 2: Sandboxing Environments

• Action: Use sandboxing to test and isolate LLM-driven processes.
• Outcome: Any malicious activity is contained within the sandbox environment, preventing it from affecting the live system and protecting sensitive data.

Step 3: Continuous Monitoring and Anomaly Detection

• Action: Implement real-time monitoring tools to detect unusual patterns that may indicate a security or privacy threat. Use machine learning to improve threat detection over time.
• Outcome: Early detection and rapid response to potential threats, minimising the risk of data breaches and unauthorised access.

Step 4: Regular Security Audits and Updates

• Action: Ensure all LLM integrations are compliant with relevant data protection laws. Schedule regular audits to review and enhance security measures.
• Outcome: Continuous improvement in line with evolving threats, maintaining a high standard of security and compliance.

Outcome

By implementing these strategies, the e-commerce company enhances the security and privacy of its LLM applications. This proactive approach protects the company from potential financial and reputational damage and builds trust with customers by demonstrating a commitment to secure and ethical AI practices.

AI Governance in LLM Security

Integrating AI Governance for Robust LLM Security

AI governance is essential for ensuring the secure and ethical deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs). It involves establishing policies, procedures and oversight mechanisms that guide the development, deployment and management of AI technologies, helping to manage risks effectively and maintain compliance with regulatory standards.

Establishing an AI Governance Framework

Policy Development

• Action: Develop comprehensive policies for data access, usage and protection.
• Outcome: Clear guidelines for handling sensitive data and ensuring compliance with legal and ethical standards.

Ethical Guidelines

• Action: Create ethical guidelines for AI use.
• Outcome: Responsible AI deployment that respects user privacy and adheres to societal norms.

Multi-disciplinary Teams

• Action: Involve stakeholders from legal, compliance, IT and business units in AI governance.
• Outcome: Comprehensive risk management from multiple perspectives.

Record Keeping

• Action: Maintain detailed records of AI development and data handling practices.
• Outcome: Transparent documentation supporting accountability and regulatory compliance.

Audit Trails

• Action: Implement audit trails to track interactions with LLMs and data handling activities.
• Outcome: Enhanced traceability and accountability, facilitating investigation and response to security incidents.

By integrating AI governance into the security strategy for LLMs, businesses can effectively manage the complexities of AI deployment. This approach not only mitigates risks and ensures compliance but also fosters trust in AI technologies, supporting their sustainable and ethical use in business operations.

Zendata's Role in AI Governance

Zendata enhances AI governance [3] by providing advanced tools for data observability and AI explainability. These tools support businesses in conducting thorough threat modelling and risk analysis for LLM security:

• Real-time Data Observability: Zendata provides real-time insights into data usage and flows, helping businesses monitor and secure sensitive data. This continuous observability is crucial for identifying potential security threats early in the threat modelling process. By understanding how data moves and is used, businesses can better anticipate and mitigate risks such as data breaches and unauthorised access.
• AI Explainability: Using advanced explainability techniques, Zendata clarifies AI decision-making processes, making it easier to identify and mitigate biases and other risks. This transparency supports risk analysis by providing clear insights into how LLMs arrive at their decisions, which is essential for understanding and managing potential vulnerabilities.
• Automated Policy Alignment: Zendata automates the mapping and comparison of AI governance policies with actual data usage and AI model development practices. This alignment ensures that AI operations adhere to established guidelines and standards, reducing the risk of policy violations and enhancing the overall security posture.

Supporting Threat Modelling and Risk Analysis

Zendata's platform directly supports threat modelling and risk analysis for LLMs by providing tools that monitor for biases, harmful content and data privacy issues. The integration of these tools within a unified platform enables businesses to:

• Monitor LLMs for Harmful Content and Privacy Issues: Zendata continuously scans LLM outputs for biases and privacy violations, ensuring that the models operate within safe and ethical boundaries. This monitoring is integral to identifying potential threats early in the threat modelling process.
• Detect and Mitigate Biases: Using advanced AI explainability techniques, Zendata identifies and addresses biases in LLMs, both pre- and post-deployment. This capability is essential for risk analysis, helping businesses understand and mitigate biases that could lead to unethical or unsafe AI behaviours.
• Real-time Data Usage Context: By providing detailed data usage insights, Zendata helps businesses understand how data flows through their business and AI systems, facilitating better governance and risk management. This context is crucial for effective threat modelling, allowing businesses to anticipate how different data interactions might introduce vulnerabilities.

Final Thoughts

The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into business processes offers significant benefits but also introduces complex security and privacy challenges. Effective threat modelling and risk analysis will help identify and mitigate these risks. 

By implementing mitigation strategies such as input validation, sandboxing, continuous monitoring and regular security audits, businesses can safeguard their LLMs and maintain trust in their AI systems.

With a strong AI governance policy in place, businesses can trust that LLMs are deployed ethically and in compliance with regulatory standards. 

Proactive management of LLM security, combined with AI governance and Zendata’s capabilities, is key to harnessing LLMs responsibly and effectively. 

As AI technologies continue to evolve, staying ahead of potential risks and maintaining stringent security practices will be essential for leveraging the full potential of LLMs securely and ethically.

[1] https://www.expert.ai/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/LLMs-Opportunity-Risk-and-Paths-Forward-eBook.pdf

[2] https://www.zendata.dev/post/data-poisoning-artists-and-creators-fight-back-against-big-ai

[3] https://www.zendata.dev/ai-governance