Crossword Cybersecurity has launched a new CyberAI Practice. The practice, which sits within Crossword Cybersecurity’s Consulting business, consolidates Crossword’s artificial intelligence (AI) expertise into a centre of excellence that will deliver AI-focused cybersecurity consulting services and products to help clients harness the power of AI in the organisation.

The ever-evolving threat landscape and proliferation of data-generating apps and devices has had organisations grasping at Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM) as the solution to the problems they face. While AI has a huge role to play in improving security posture, customer experience, identifying insights and streamlining business processes, the pace of change, regulation, deployment by employees of ‘Shadow AI’, and ‘AI washing’ by marketers, can leave cybersecurity teams struggling to remain current.

The LLM dilemma

LLMs have led to the emergence of many new tools, which must be assessed and assured so that adoption is controlled and does not pose legal, reputational, or commercial threats. Simultaneously, LLMs have empowered would-be attackers by lowering the barriers to launching successful attacks.

Crossword has already led a significant initiative in investigating the application of Generative AI to cyber security. This has been conducted with major industry partners and leading universities, including academics from Oxford University and MIT in the USA and AI researchers from the world famous Alan Turing Institute.

Helping enterprises keep pace with AI innovation

The CyberAI Practice will provide organisations with advisory, security testing and engineering services, which will allow organisations to manage AI threats and grasp the opportunities to improve efficiency, cybersecurity, and create new experiences for end users. Following its launch, the CyberAI Practice is offering the following services:

● Engineering – Modular services designed to support the assessment and development of LLM architectures, LLM security testing, design and security architecture reviews, and wider LLM-related engineering services

● CyberAI onsite workshops – Education and maturity workshops to help organisations understand the market, assess their needs and existing AI use, and consult on whether to ‘build or buy’

James Henry, Consulting Innovation Director at Crossword Cybersecurity said: “The latest wave of AI technologies hit the security industry with such pace that many businesses have been struggling to keep up. At Crossword it is our mission to provide businesses with the knowledge and tools needed to securely embrace the benefits of Generative AI technologies, whilst also managing the associated risks.”