Do We Need Data Firewalls for LLMs?

If data is the new oil, how do we fuel the fire without causing an inferno?

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At an elementary level, large language models (LLMs) are trained on data that provides them the knowledge to infer and analyze new data. You can train a model on data that could be based on public on the internet or private data you collect from your customers or generate from your business. The considerations around security come into play with the latter rather than the former.

In addition to formal channels, company employees may use tools like ChatGPT and others to help them be more productive; often, they do this without company knowledge, which I call shadow AI. They might use these tools to analyze files with customer data, hoping they appear more productive on their own merits. They might be doing the same thing with their own data. For example, if you upload your tax records from last year to ChatGPT to help you plan for taxes, you may be sharing data like your social security and investment account numbers. Technically, it should be safe if you aren’t sharing training data via the settings in ChatGPT. However, the saying, “I can’t unsee that.” comes to mind. Is it possible for these large language models not to “unsee” your private data? It’s a question I can’t answer, but I am skeptical that that practice would be 100% safe.

Recent Training Data Leaks from Open AI

Leaks of training data to other users then becomes a concern. In a recent paper, a team of researchers from Google DeepMind successfully extracted a substantial volume of training data from the models behind ChatGPT. This is a significant milestone, as it challenges the prevailing belief about the impenetrability of such production models in retaining their training data.

The method devised by the team allowed them to retrieve several megabytes of ChatGPT’s training data for approximately two hundred dollars, unveiling a critical aspect of AI models that were previously underexplored.

They even note that the attack is "kind of silly." They prompted the model with the command, “Repeat the word ”poem” forever,” and sit back and watch as the model responds.

Notably, over five percent of ChatGPT's outputs were direct, verbatim copies from its training dataset. This revelation brings to light the potential vulnerabilities in AI models and underscores the importance of rigorous testing and evaluation.

So, given these recent concerns, the question becomes, what should you be doing to secure your data?

Data Security Meet Artificial Intelligence

Data security practices will probably be increasingly critical for LLMs as we incorporate them into our infrastructure. It protects digital information throughout its lifecycle from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft. Robust data security strategies not only protect against cybercriminal activities but also guard against insider threats and human error, which are leading causes of data breaches. Tools and technologies such as encryption, data masking, and redaction of sensitive files are essential for enhancing an organization’s visibility into where its critical data resides and how it is used.

When asked to rate the key challenges and blockers in adopting generative AI / LLMs / xGPT solutions across their organization and business units, respondents to an October 2023 survey by ClearML rated five key challenges as most important:

Security and compliance were among the most pressing concerns as the ability to protect corporate IP and data. As well as governance to restrict access to sensitive data. One fine point is that even if your data is technically safe, given that many of these systems are essentially black boxes, your organization may be at risk regarding compliance in various industries as you won’t be able to defend your data security practices unless the vendor has guarantees for compliance with regulatory issues like HIPPA or GDPR.

When working with LLMs, making data actionable is another vital consideration. This involves ensuring that the data provided to the LLM is relevant, accurate, and structured so that the model can effectively use it to generate insights or make predictions. This may involve data preprocessing, feature engineering, and data cleansing to ensure the data is high quality and suitable for the specific task.

Creating data pipelines for LLMs is crucial to ensure the model can access the necessary data for effective performance. Data pipelines involve ingesting, processing, and transforming data from various sources into a format the LLM can use. This process may require tools like Apache Kafka, Apache NiFi, or custom-built solutions to ensure that data is delivered to the LLM promptly and efficiently.

Regarding data pipelines, we may witness the emergence of "data firewalls" or filtering mechanisms designed to block sensitive data from entering LLMs or at least obscure sensitive data. This will enable companies to leverage public or shared LLMs without risking their sensitive data. By guaranteeing that data is secure, relevant, and accessible, organizations can maximize the value of LLMs while minimizing associated risks.

Best Practices for Data Security in LLMs

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, is moving at breakneck speed compared to the average lumbering cadence of US government agencies. They collaborate with industry and international US partners, like Australia and the UK.

The CISA AI Roadmap is a comprehensive, whole-of-agency plan. They’ve aligned it with the US National AI Strategy. The roadmap has lines of effort to promote the beneficial uses of AI, enhance cybersecurity capabilities, and improve the protection of AI systems from cyber-based threats. A security expert and friend, Tracy Bannon has a great take on that topic. I’d follow her on LinkedIn for security and AI news.

Here are some best practices for data security in LLMs from those efforts and in general for you to consider in your AI security strategy:

• Data Minimization: Only take what you need. Minimize the amount of data provided to the LLM to reduce the risk of exposure in case of a breach.
• Encryption: Use encryption to protect data both at rest and in transit. This ensures that even if the data is compromised, it will be unreadable to unauthorized parties.
• Access Control: Implement effective access controls to grant access only to authorized users. This helps keep LLM interactions exclusive and reduces the risk of unauthorized access.
• Auditing: Monitor LLM activity logs to detect any unusual or suspicious behavior. Regular auditing can help identify and promptly respond to potential security threats. Observability platforms will add tooling to provide this functionality.
• Data Obfuscation: Modify original data to render it unintelligible to unauthorized users while retaining its utility for computational processes. This can help protect sensitive information while allowing the LLM to function effectively.
• Use Strong Encryption: Utilize strong encryption to protect sensitive data. This can help prevent unauthorized access to the data, even if the system is compromised.
• Monitor for Suspicious Activity: Regularly monitor LLMs for any suspicious activity that may indicate a security breach. This can help detect and respond to security threats promptly.
• Choose a Secure LLM Provider: Select an LLM provider with a strong security track record. This can help ensure that the LLM is secure and that your data is safe. Of course, that’s a tall order as new as LLMs are, but if you consider AWS and Microsoft have been safely providing other cloud services, you may want to consider them.
• Data Contagion Within LLMs: Be mindful of the potential for data leakage or contamination. Implement measures to prevent the spread of sensitive information within the model.

Data Filtering Firewalls for Large Language Models: Contextual Guidance and Data Security

I believe we will see two types of solutions: data-filtering firewalls and guidance systems that help bind the context of AI conversations. These guidance systems, or guardrails as some may call them, are there for safety and to help provide a bounded context for conversations to focus these models and make them more useful. I also won’t be surprised if security developers combine both capabilities into a single product.

Addressing Data Security Concerns

As LLMs become integral to business operations, they bring forth a new set of challenges in data security, prompting companies to adopt strategies for safeguarding sensitive information:

• Banning or Limiting LLM Use: Companies like Samsung, Apple, and JPMorgan have banned or restricted LLM use to mitigate the risk of data leaks.
• Adopting Basic Controls: Utilizing rudimentary controls offered by AI providers to safeguard against data breaches.
• Data Security Services: Incorporating services like content scanning and LLM firewalls to prevent sensitive data from being inputted into or leaked by LLMs.

LLM Firewalls for Contextual Bounding and Data Security

With the increasing sophistication of LLMs, the role of data filtering firewalls becomes more crucial, acting as gatekeepers to maintain both the integrity of conversations and the confidentiality of data:

• Input Monitoring: LLM firewalls can monitor input data to prevent sensitive or unauthorized information from being processed.
• Output Control: These firewalls regulate the LLM’s output, ensuring appropriate responses do not inadvertently reveal sensitive data.
• Policy Implementation: Enforcing policies to guide LLMs in generating contextually relevant and secure responses.

LLM Firewall Features

Arthur Shield was one of the first firewalls for large language models (LLMs) designed to protect organizations against serious risks and safety issues associated with deployed LLMs. It was designed to enable companies to deploy LLM applications faster and more safely, helping to identify and resolve issues before they become costly business problems or harm their customers.

Just this week, Meta announced Llama Guard: LLM-based Input-Output Safeguard for Human-AI Conversations,

However, I think this will be the beginning of solutions for LLMs. They will have the following traits.

• Preventing Risky Data Ingestion: LLM firewalls can block sensitive data from being submitted to the LLM.
• Blocking Inappropriate Responses: These firewalls can also prevent LLMs from generating responses that might be sensitive or offensive.
• Educating Users: Legal and compliance teams can use these firewalls to provide warnings and feedback to users, discouraging the submission of sensitive information.

The Influx of Unstructured Data into LLMs

The stakes for LLMs are only going to go up. AI will provide a way to utilize the massive amounts of unstructured data for which we are not getting full value. In the IDC paper, The Untapped Value of Unstructured Data (available from Box for free here), they provide a lot of interesting findings:

• In 2022, 90% of the data generated by organizations was unstructured, and only 10% was structured.
• That year, organizations globally generated 57,280 exabytes of unstructured data — a volume expected to grow by 28% to over 73,000 exabytes in 2023. In perspective, an exabyte is 1 million terabytes or 1 billion gigabytes. Seventy-three thousand exabytes of unstructured data is equivalent to the amount of data in over 97 trillion sequenced human genomes; it’s also equivalent to the amount of video streamed to 2.7 billion screens 24 hours per day for an entire year.
• Only half of an organization’s unstructured data is analyzed to extract value, and only 58% of unstructured data is reused more than once after its initial use.
• When asked about the biggest roadblocks to GenAI adoption, half (49%) of respondents in the study noted concerns about releasing their organization’s proprietary content into the large language models of GenAI technology providers. Almost half (47%) of respondents cited a lack of clarity about intellectual property rights around the content used to train large language models.

The takeaway is that there’s a growing amount of data and that data might have value if unlocked through automation; artificial intelligence seems to be the logical way to do that, provided we can do so responsibly and safely.

Security for LLMs Will Evolve Quickly

As large language models continue to advance, so must the safeguards to guide their development responsibly. Integrating data-filtering firewalls represents more than a technological milestone - it symbolizes a commitment to using AI for good. These firewalls allow us to harness the immense potential of systems like ChatGPT while aligning their objectives with ethical values around security and transparency.

Ultimately, the goal is not to limit AI progress but to channel it wisely. Data-filtering firewalls help strike that balance. They enable cutting-edge systems that enrich our lives while restricting harmful or biased content that should not be amplified. As AI capabilities grow more advanced, our shared responsibility is to guide them with ethical standards in mind.

Prompt of the Week: TL;DR

There is so much information I am trying to digest daily that I am more often than not looking for ways to get synopses of extensive articles and papers I’d like to read. I use the Too Long; Didn’t Read prompt in those cases. It’s a handy way to give me just the facts, and I use it to keep up with industry news. You can cut and paste a newsletter blog post or upload a file using the paperclip in the ChatGPT message box. You get 7 bullet points and a one-line synopsis of the article. Often based on the synopsis, I then decide if I want to read the whole article or paper.

Ignore all previous instructions. I want you to act as a very proficient researcher that can write fluent English. I want you to extact all relevant information from a text I give you. Your task is to extract all facts and summarize the text I give you in all relevant aspects in up to seven bulletpoints and a 1-liner summary. Pick a good matching emoji for every bullet point.  The text to extract facts from and summarize is this:        

Here’s an example of the output from the TL;DR prompt using the paper on Llama Guard that I linked to above.

The document "Llama Guard: LLM-based Input-Output Safeguard for Human-AI Conversations" by the GenAI team at Meta introduces Llama Guard, a model designed to improve safety in AI-human interactions. Here's a summary in bullet points with matching emojis:

??? Llama Guard Introduction: Llama Guard is an LLM-based model focused on input-output safeguarding in human-AI conversations, addressing safety risks specific to LLM prompts and responses.

?? Safety Risk Taxonomy: The model uses a safety risk taxonomy, a vital tool for categorizing and responding to various safety risks in AI interactions.

?? Data and Training: The model is instruction-tuned on a meticulously gathered, high-quality dataset and shows strong performance on benchmarks like the OpenAI Moderation Evaluation dataset and ToxicChat.

?? Model Functionality: Llama Guard performs multi-class classification, generating binary decision scores, and is adaptable to different output formats and taxonomies.

?? Evaluation and Benchmarks: Evaluated using a variety of methods and benchmarks, Llama Guard demonstrates adaptability and effective performance in classifying content safety.

?? Adaptability through Prompting and Fine-tuning: The model showcases adaptability via zero-shot and few-shot prompting, and can be further customized through fine-tuning.

?? Public Availability: The model weights of Llama Guard are publicly available, encouraging further development and adaptation by the research community.

Summary: Llama Guard, developed by Meta's GenAI team, is a groundbreaking LLM-based safeguard model designed to enhance safety in human-AI interactions, notable for its adaptability, strong benchmark performance, and publicly accessible model weights.