Zero Trust AI Security — definition

Zero Trust AI Security applies the zero-trust principle — never trust, always verify — to AI systems and the infrastructure they run on. Every request to an AI model, every tool call an agent makes, and every data access it performs is authenticated, authorized, and logged, regardless of whether it originates inside the network perimeter.

In practice, zero-trust AI means scoped API keys per use case, just-in-time access to data stores, output filtering before results reach downstream systems, and continuous monitoring of agent behavior against a defined policy baseline. It is increasingly required by enterprise security teams before any agentic AI deployment goes to production.

Related terms

AI Security — AI security is the discipline of protecting AI systems from adversarial attacks, data poisoning, model theft, and misuse — and of preventing AI from being used as an attack vector against other systems.

Prompt Injection — Prompt injection is a class of attack where adversarial text inside a user query, tool result, or external document overrides the AI system's instructions.

AI Governance — AI governance is the system of policies, controls, and accountabilities that determines what AI is allowed to do inside an organization, who approves AI deployments, how AI decisions are audited, and how risk is managed.