New AI Innovations that supercharge Data Protection

As we soak up the summer sun and get some much needed outdoor time, what could be better than another AI blog? While AI has been overanalyzed and dissected 10 ways from Sunday, it still doesn’t negate the fact that it’s one of the most potentially transformative technologies the industry has ever seen.

But for AI to reach its potential, it has to be harnessed properly, both by end users and IT administrators. To that point, Zscalers has announced two new innovations around AI that help the industry balance risk vs reward when it comes to AI, all the while accelerating how IT does its job.   Let’s explore these a bit closer in hopes it might help your company grab onto the AI productivity revolution with both hands.

Innovation 1: Secure data faster WITH AI

It’s no surprise that AI can help humans do things smarter and faster. This holds true for security tasks as well. One area in which AI excels is accurate, quick pattern matching. When we look at technologies like DLP that are largely based on signature matching, we see an area where AI and ML can drastically help.

Many organizations struggle with operationalizing DLP. Enabling visibility across their distributed data often requires tweaking dictionaries and engines, and deploying them across various channels. Worse yet, with the overload of point products, many security teams find they have multiple DLP policies. With different alerting systems and cadences across DLP policies, teams get overloaded with inconsistent alerts which further impacts response time.  

Auto Data Discovery for Inline, Endpoint and Cloud

This is where AI-driven visibility from Zscaler can change the game. Using AI-Driven auto discovery, data location and movement can be quickly identified across the organization. Zscaler first announced auto data discovery in 2022 over inline channels, using our Inline cloud proxy. Without lifting a finger, data security admins got to see outbound data risks across all users and apps, without any requirements on DLP.  But we haven’t stopped there. With this new launch, Zscaler announces the addition of two new channels of auto data discovery to their existing inline data discovery—on devices via Endpoint DLP and within clouds via DSPM.  By automatically discovering data across all these channels, Zscaler’s new approach can dramatically accelerate teams ability to find where all their sensitive data is, right out of the box.

To better understand how this works, check out this clip from the Data Protection Innovation launch talking through AI-Driven Data Discovery across inline, endpoint, and cloud.

See how Auto Data Discovery works:
Watch the video

Innovation 2:  Protect data better FROM AI

Every organization across the globe is dealing with the risks associated with generative AI (GenAI).  While these applications can provide a tremendous lift to user productivity, the risks to data should not be underestimated. It’s far too easy for users to leverage public apps like ChatGPT with sensitive data, which instantly puts that data out in the open. Organizations have made a habit of responding to these risks by blocking these apps outright, which forces users to find other ways to access them, potentially stifling productivity altogether.

Generative AI Security with Prompt Visibility

With Zscaler’s new innovation around GenAI Security, organizations get a powerful new way to safely embrace AI apps while reducing the risk of data loss. As an inline proxy, Zscaler’s Data Protection platform delivers uninterrupted visibility to all shadow AI apps. Additionally, as an SSE cloud, you get comprehensive controls that let you either isolate GenAI apps and data in a secure browser or via DLP inspection that allows you to selectively block certain types of data headed to GenAI.

But what makes Zsclaer’s new innovation so special? The answer is simple: Input prompt visibility. Packaged around a powerful new dashboard, this new approach lets you see the actual input prompt that was sent to the AI app. This provides valuable context into how your users are interacting with these apps, so that you can make better blocking decisions.  

To see this powerful approach in action, we’ve curated the GenAI demo from our Data Protection Innovation launch, which will walk you through everything.  

See Generative AI Security in action
Watch the video

Bringing it all together

If you’re looking for faster ways to find and discover data loss, or better approaches to controlling GenAI applications, you should definitely check out our Data Protection Launch event. In addition to AI innovations and in-depth breakouts, we’ve detailed other transformation features around DSPM, SSPM, and Email security.   

To watch the event, and access all resources, jump on over to Zscaler Data Protection Innovation Launch