In addition to Microsoft Purview, TotalSecure AI integrates with Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender XDR.
Those working in IT, software development, finance, compliance, tech law and risk management will know that corporate artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is hitting a wall of data security and compliance requirements that threatens to halt growth and innovation.
We are well into the era of AI deployment and there is no shortage of brilliant AI tools, large language models (LLMs) and autonomous agents promising the allure of optimisation and efficiency and, in the security space, robust 360-degree protections.
Not only do cyber security tools have to be as constant, continuous and autonomous as the weaponised threats they pre-empt and diffuse, they also need to pre-empt and respond to internal risks. Well-meaning but risk-taking employees are using AI to work faster and better, and in so doing may be inadvertently sharing highly confidential personal or strategic data to an AI platform that’s open or not well secured.
And for businesses operating in highly regulated environments, like retail banks, healthcare providers, asset managers and infrastructure operators, what seem like minor hurdles can quickly become absolute operational roadblocks. Even for those companies operating in unregulated or highly fluid sectors, navigating AI and cyber security risks today is no longer just an intellectual exercise but an instantly destructive threat that can immediately harm a business, its reputation – or both.
In most industries, though, AI and data compliance is evolving from a secondary thought tacked onto an innovation plan into a legal, fiduciary boundary.
And this boundary is coming into clashing contrast with how off-the-shelf, public cloud AI infrastructure operates. When an autonomous AI agent has the power to access data repositories and execute actions at machine speed, a data leak, a system hijack or an identity breach can happen in milliseconds, not days. Relying on standard cloud set-ups or retrofitting security after the fact is out of the question. Piecemeal, post-rollout patches are simply not an acceptable strategy.
One of the more alarming instances we’ve seen recently is a salary database – complete with names, ID numbers, home addresses and salary detail – being uploaded to an AI platform, probably innocently and to take advantage of the speedy data organisation or analysis that these tools can offer. But in so doing, exposing the personal data of staff and proprietary data of the company to the unknown depths of an AI source outside of corporate control, governance and confidentiality that can be fed back to other users without question.
Even if you consider the seemingly more benign AI functionality of exceptionally fast and detailed coding, there are hidden risks that many users don’t consider. You might be getting your code back quickly, but are you checking every detail of it? Are you launching with insecure code, vulnerable dependencies, disclosure of sensitive information and unvalidated AI logic and hidden backdoors that permit access from the get go?
As we continue to discover more about what AI can do for good and bad, we need to engineer the secure, resilient and fully isolated environments required to let it run safely.
iqbusiness has developed two unique proprietary managed secure AI services designed to help organisations adopt AI confidently, without compromising data security or compliance, protecting both the enterprise itself and its AI journey:
- TotalSecure is a managed security service covering security operations centre (SOC) as a service, chief information security officer (CISO) as a service, and protection across e-mail, devices and data.
- TotalSecure AI builds on that foundation but is purpose‑built for AI adoption. It uniquely integrates AI data security, policy enforcement as code and regulator‑ready metrics.
TotalSecure is agnostic, but the best place to start is always the most obvious, and that’s with tech and tools that a business already uses and invests in. For millions of businesses globally, integration with Microsoft is that starting point.
TotalSecure AI is deeply integrated with the Microsoft ecosystem, enabling a seamless integration within existing tech stacks. It combines Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) with advanced monitoring and policy enforcement to deliver:
- AI data security: Continuous discovery and classification of sensitive data used by AI models.
- Policy enforcement as code: Automated guardrails ensuring AI usage aligns with regulatory and business requirements.
- Risk monitoring: Real-time visibility into AI activity, with SOC integration for rapid detection and response.
- Regulator-ready metrics: Transparent reporting that demonstrates compliance and builds trust with stakeholders.
- Lean managed service: Efficiency through automation, reducing manual overheads while strengthening governance.
In addition to Microsoft Purview, TotalSecure AI integrates with Microsoft Sentinel, for SOC telemetry and AI risk monitoring, and Microsoft Defender XDR, for policy enforcement and governance.
Together, TotalSecure and TotalSecure AI provide seamless visibility, automated guardrails and real‑time response across the environments where businesses and their staff already operate. Businesses gain the ability to innovate with AI securely, accelerate adoption without fear of data leakage, and show regulators and executives that internal and external risks are being actively managed.
These solutions are already in deployment at a number of businesses, which report significant benefits from TotalSecure and TotalSecureAI:
- AI adoption projects have accelerated 30% faster while maintaining compliance.
- Manual compliance reporting effort has reduced by over 40% through automated dashboards.
- Detection and remediation of AI‑related data leakage incidents has reduced to minutes instead of hours thanks to their SOC integration.
In the constant tumult of AI, data and security, these real-life use cases and results demonstrate both efficiency gains and risk reduction. Without question, businesses need to know how to keep its intellectual property and data safe, and must know what its people are doing with AI. True cyber resilience supporting safe AI adoption and innovation is totally possible with the right tools and team at your side.
Wayne Jones is CTO, Security Services at iqx, a division of technology and management consultancy iqbusiness. Contact Jones to find out more about their proprietary security solutions, TotalSecure and TotalSecure AI. www.iqbusiness.net
