In a recent product webinar, Zain Malik (Product Marketing Director) and Yuval Sarel (Senior Product Manager) at Cyera explored how organizations can effectively secure their AI adoption using Cyera’s AI Guardian.
AI is becoming a part of everyday life. We use it to work smarter, boost efficiency, and drive innovation. But as more companies invest in AI, many projects run into problems and never make it to production. According to a MIT report, nearly 95% of generative AI pilots fail to reach production. The primary reason? “They weren't built for the scale and trust that we are accustomed to when it comes to enterprise technology” - Zain Malik. That’s a fundamental lack of trust driven by poor or insecure data controls.
The Challenges of AI Security
Zain kicked off the webinar by sharing insights from a recent survey (Cyera’s 2025 State of AI Data Security Report) of over 900 security and IT professionals, revealing three recurring themes that block enterprise AI adoption:
- Lack of Visibility: It is impossible to protect what you cannot see. Unchecked AI adoption has led to massive "Shadow AI" sprawl.
- Lack of Governance: Even with visibility, many organizations lack the enforcement capabilities to set guardrails on how AI is used.
- Unique Technology Challenges: It is incredibly difficult to track how data and identities interact as they access AI models.
As Yuval noted, managing these tools across varying systems creates an inconsistent, complex mess for the security team.
The New Security Perimeter = Data
Historically, every new era of technology introduced new perimeter networks, endpoints, or infrastructure. AI shifts this paradigm entirely.
"AI essentially redefines where security begins. And that's really at the data layer, well past the era of perimeters, networks, endpoints, or infrastructure. And with AI, it's no longer enough just to protect these containers around the data. It's about securing the data itself in a whole new way." - Zain Malik
AI models (public or custom-built) rely on large volumes of data to function. This reliance puts your data at the center of risk. These tools often require broad access to data to perform tasks that mimic human behavior. Without clear visibility into your data, your organization is exposed to threats you may not see coming: "AI is going to use the full extent of the access you give it, unlike a human user." - Yuval Sarel
That’s why Cyera developed AI Guardian to help organizations manage data security as AI adoption grows. It addresses the practical challenges of securing data in environments where AI tools operate and combines AI Security Posture Management with real-time protection, using a data-first approach. This gives security teams the context they need to understand and control how AI interacts with sensitive information, while also providing them with the foundation to accelerate their AI maturity and realize their agentic vision
How AI Guardian allows security teams to confidently enable AI adoption.
"AI is only as good as the data it uses and has access to... this means you gotta know what's in the data before you give it access." - Yuval Sarel
1. AI-SPM (AI Security Posture Management) During a live demo, Yuval Sarel showed how AI-SPM finds and governs all AI in your environment, including public tools, embedded copilots, and custom agents. It maps these to connected identities and data stores. The platform provides a clear view of each tool's business purpose, data access, permissions, and associated risks. It also uncovers hidden AI use and spots differences between intended and actual data access.
2. AI Protect (Runtime Policy Enforcement) monitors AI prompts, responses, and actions in real time. It calculates severity based on content and context to stop threats before they become incidents. In the live demo, the AI Firewall blocked an employee from accessing unreleased financial data via a chatbot, triggering instant remediation and alerting security teams.
Ready to safely scale your business with AI? Cyera’s AI Guardian allows security teams to move from discovery to protection in weeks, not months. Don’t let security become a roadblock to innovation.
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