Lock Down AI Risk: Boost Security with Azure’s Cutting-Edge Shields

Key Points

• Prompt Injection Attacks are a Top Threat: These attacks manipulate AI inputs to access unauthorized info or change behavior, with Azure AI Content Safety offering a defense.
• Prompt Shields Provides Real-Time Protection: This unified API detects and blocks direct and indirect attacks, integrating with Azure OpenAI content filters and machine learning.
• Microsoft Offers Comprehensive Security Tools: Azure AI Foundry, Defender for Cloud integration, and customer success stories (e.g., AXA, Wrtn) demonstrate Azure’s commitment to secure AI development.

Strong Defense Against Prompt Injection Attacks

In the ever-changing AI security landscape, prompt injection attacks have emerged as a significant threat to generative AI app builders. These attacks involve manipulating an AI model’s input to alter its behavior or access sensitive information. According to the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP), prompt injection is the top threat facing Large Language Models (LLMs) today.

Azure AI Content Safety, featuring Prompt Shields, is designed to defend against such emerging threats. This unified API analyzes inputs to LLM-based solutions, guarding against direct and indirect threats. Direct attacks, like jailbreak attempts, involve malicious prompts to bypass security layers and extract sensitive data (e.g., social security numbers). Indirect attacks, or cross-prompt injection attacks (XPIA), embed malicious prompts in seemingly harmless external content (e.g., documents, emails), which, when processed, compromise the system.

Prompt Shields Capabilities

• Contextual Awareness: Discerns the context of prompts, reducing false positives by distinguishing attacks from genuine inputs.
• Spotlighting: Announced at Microsoft Build 2025, this capability enhances detection of indirect attacks by distinguishing trusted and untrusted inputs, securing generative AI apps against adversarial prompts.
• Real-Time Response: Operates in real-time, identifying and mitigating threats before they compromise AI models, minimizing data breach risks.

Comprehensive Security Approach

• Risk and Safety Evaluations: Azure AI Foundry offers assessments for content risks (e.g., hate speech, violence) and vulnerabilities.
• Red-Teaming Agent: Enables automated scans and adversarial probing to identify risks at scale, promoting proactive safety testing.
• Robust Controls and Guardrails: Prompt Shields is part of Azure AI Foundry’s content filters, detecting and mitigating risks, including prompt injection attacks and ungrounded output.
• Defender for Cloud Integration: Surfaces AI security posture recommendations and threat protection alerts within the development environment, bridging security and engineering teams.

Customer Success Stories

• AXA: Utilizes Azure OpenAI and Prompt Shields to prevent prompt injection attacks, ensuring reliable and secure AI models.
• Wrtn: Leverages Azure AI Content Safety to maintain compliance and security across customizable AI products, praising the ease of activating/deactivating content filters.

Integrating Prompt Shields into Your AI Strategy

Enabling Prompt Shields is straightforward for Azure OpenAI customers and Azure AI Content Safety customers using non-OpenAI models. By integrating these capabilities, organizations can harness AI’s power without compromising security, backed by Microsoft’s leadership in identifying and mitigating prompt injection attacks and its commitment to Trustworthy AI.

Microsoft’s dedication to secure, private, and safe AI is reflected in its Secure Future Initiative and Responsible AI principles. As organizations worldwide adopt Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft 365 Copilot, they can drive growth, productivity, and value-added experiences with confidence. Start enhancing your AI security with Azure AI Content Safety and Prompt Shields today.

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