The Importance GenAI Visibility plays in the Generative AI Observability toolkit
If your company doesn’t have full visibility into its current Generative AI (GenAI) usage right now, it’s badly behind, and leadership should be concerned. The good news – it can take less than 30 minutes to get it. But first, let’s unpack what we mean by GenAI observability in order to understand why the component of visibility is so important.
What is GenAI Observability?
GenAI Observability is the next evolution in managing and monitoring generative AI within organizations. While GenAI Visibility provides a snapshot of AI usage, GenAI Observability goes further, offering a holistic view that encompasses not only visibility but also management and monitoring capabilities. It’s about understanding the behavior, performance, and impact of AI applications in a much deeper and integrated way.
But, in order to properly observe generative AI usage within your enterprise, we must first understand that its essential component, visibility, is not to be overlooked.
Let’s dive into what we mean when we mention generative AI visibility and why its enhanced features are such an integral part of the overall observability framework.
A Complete Definition of GenAI Visibility
Generative AI Visibility should be a complete view of all Generative AI use in the organization, sanctioned or unsanctioned, by each and every department and employee, all the way down to prompts and attachments.
Full visibility allows you to see:
- Innovation, responsible use, and adoption by department and individuals
- Risky behavior with prompting and attachments
- Gaps in your DLP that frequently miss GenAI risk
- Overall compliance with governance and policy
- Deep and complete forensics for investigations and audits.
- ShadowAI – unsanctioned GenAI use in your enterprise
- Areas of opportunity to improve employee training & productivity
- Adoption, or lack thereof, for purchased GenAI applications
Suboptimal Approaches to Generative AI Usage
Without this level of visibility, your organization is missing the essential ingredients in creating a strategic and responsible Generative AI program. Often, the answer to GenAI risk and lack of visibility is to block it, or, use a single GPT vendor. These options are less than optimal.
Blocking Is Not the Answer
Many companies believe they are solving the risks of GenAI by blocking GenAI applications on the network. Any security professional will tell you that you can’t stop employees from engaging in risky behavior, even when well educated. In this particular instance, employees who discover applications that make them more productive will find a way to use them, blockage or not. And DLPs typically don’t catch all GenAI behavior – so any blockage protocol used is most likely partial. Blocking is the equivalent of “sticking your head in the sand” – GenAI is rapidly becoming the new normal in day-to-day employee activities whether you want it to be or not. Not having visibility will ensure you have undiscovered, and potentially dangerous, unmanaged GenAI related risk.
A Single GPT Vendor is also, not the answer
Many organizations have added or are looking at bringing in a single source for their GenAI applications e.g. Microsoft Co-pilot. While this approach might be able to get some type of program and learning started, this direction is also problematic. There is no silver bullet that will ensure employees will use the GenAI you select for them and as mentioned earlier, employees will opt-in to applications that work best for them. A great example is how Zoom took off with individual employees over enterprise deployed incumbents like WebEx – it was just a better tool. If a coder or marketer finds a better GenAI tool than the one you are providing through a single provider, rest assured, they will find a way to use it. Without visibility, you will most likely miss the various types of unsanctioned usage in the organization along with understanding the productivity and risk attached to it.
Full Visibility is the Essential Component of Generative AI Observability (Managing, Monitoring & Measuring GenAI)
No matter if you are blocking, using a single vendor or leveraging a host of GenAI applications in your organization, you still need full visibility. You can’t manage what you can’t see and understand.
For blockers, at some point in time they will need to adapt to GenAI or fall far behind their competition. Having visibility in place is the first step in developing a viable strategy for their organization, in tandem with establishing GenAI governance standards and laying down appropriate guardrails.
For those with nascent or growing programs, visibility is essential to evolving strategy, understanding if GenAI is hitting enterprise and departmental KPIs, finding and decreasing risky behavior, tracking adoption, informing training and providing the ability to investigate and audit as required by compliance guidelines,
Your Current Generative AI Observability and Visibility Tools are Not Enough, that’s why we created Portal26
Your current security and governance tools are not created for the unique aspects of GenAI. That’s why more than a year ago, we created Portal26. We securely ingest and encrypt all of your GenAI traffic, even what’s not recognized by your DLP, and provide the widest and deepest data set and analytics available. Our customers gain rich visibility into usage while mitigating risks associated with compliance, IP, and privacy. Portal26 uniquely supports audits and detailed rear-view forensics, a critical gap in enterprise AI infrastructure. Additionally, Portal26 supports employee education through usage-based policy distribution and learning materials. Boards and business leaders rely on Portal26 to understand how GenAI impacts their organizations; IT and security teams leverage robust security and forensics controls; compliance, risk and legal teams also rely on Portal26 to provide critical reporting and audit functionality.
And a reminder from the top of the page, the GenAI visibility you need can be up and running often in 30 minutes or less.
To learn more, schedule a full demo.