Threat Modeling for AI Systems

Welcome to threat modeling for AI! Before we dive into AI specifics, let's understand the basics.

Threat modeling is a structured process to identify potential security threats, vulnerabilities, and counter-measures within a system. It helps you think like an attacker.

• Identify Assets: What are you protecting? (Data, models, user accounts)
• Identify Threats: Who might attack and how?
• Identify Vulnerabilities: Weaknesses that can be exploited.
• Identify Mitigations: How to reduce or eliminate the risks.

While traditional software security focuses on code and infrastructure, AI introduces new attack surfaces.

AI systems are unique because they are:

• Data-driven: Heavily reliant on training data, which can be manipulated.
• Probabilistic: Decisions aren't always deterministic, making anomalies harder to spot.
• 'Black Box': Complex models can be opaque, hiding vulnerabilities.

These characteristics create specific threats that traditional security models might miss.