New guidelines for secure AI system development will help developers of any systems that use AI make informed cyber security decisions at every stage of the development process.
Today, the UK published the first global guidelines to ensure the secure development of AI technology.
In a testament to the UK’s leadership in AI safety, agencies from 17 other countries have confirmed they will endorse and co-seal the new guidelines.
The guidelines aim to raise the cyber security levels of artificial intelligence and help ensure that it is designed, developed, and deployed securely.
The Guidelines for Secure AI System Development have been developed by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ, and the US’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in cooperation with industry experts and 21 other international agencies and ministries from across the world – including those from all members of the G7 group of nations and the Global South.
The new UK-led guidelines are the first to be agreed upon globally. They will help developers of any systems that use AI make informed cyber security decisions at every stage of the development process – whether those systems have been created from scratch or built on top of tools and services provided by others.
The guidelines help developers ensure that cyber security is an essential pre-condition of AI system safety and integral to the development process from the outset and throughout, known as a ‘secure by design’ approach.
The product will be officially launched this afternoon at an event hosted by the NCSC, at which 100 key industry, government and international partners will gather for a panel discussion on the shared challenge of securing AI. Panellists include Microsoft, the Alan Turing Institute and UK, American, Canadian, and German cyber security agencies.
In a keynote speech at Chatham House in June, NCSC CEO Lindy Cameron warned about the perils of retrofitting security into AI systems in years to come, stressing the need to bake security into AI systems as they are developed and not as an afterthought.
These guidelines are intended as a global, multi-stakeholder effort to address that issue, building on the UK Government’s AI Safety Summit’s legacy of sustained international cooperation on AI risks.
