AI And Cybersecurity: Why Securing The Intelligent Enterprise Requires A New Security Model

Muhammad Affan Habib | Director of IT at Sharjah Maritime Academy | AI Governance & Digital Transformation Leader.

AI is no longer sitting at the edge of the enterprise as an experimental technology. It’s moving into day-to-day operations, supporting employees, interacting with institutional knowledge, assisting customers and, increasingly, taking actions across business systems.

I’ve seen this transition firsthand while leading digital transformation and cybersecurity initiatives at Sharjah Maritime Academy. We’ve progressed from exploring AI use cases to implementing AI-enabled services across admissions, employee support, teaching and learning and internal knowledge management.

AI is changing both cyber defense and cybercrime.

AI can analyze large volumes of security telemetry, detect unusual behavior, accelerate investigations, support vulnerability management and help analysts prioritize complex alerts. The NIST AI Risk Management Framework provides a useful foundation by helping organizations consider trustworthiness and risk throughout the design, development, deployment and use of AI systems.

AI is now part of the enterprise attack surface.

One of the most significant changes I’ve observed is that AI is becoming part of the enterprise attack surface. GenAI and agentic systems create additional risks, including prompt injection, sensitive information disclosure, insecure integrations, model or data poisoning, supply chain vulnerabilities and excessive agency.

This became a practical consideration as we developed AI-enabled services at SMA. For example, our AI admissions and registration assistant was designed to answer prospective students’ questions, explain programs and admission requirements, guide applicants and connect them with the appropriate team.

Data security must come before AI scale.

The NIST Generative AI Profile complements the broader AI Risk Management Framework by addressing risks specific to GenAI.