🛡️March 7 - Why AI Security is your next big thing
What you don't know can hurt you, or cause you to miss important opportunities. Which AI security skills will you focus on this year?
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In this Issue of S3T:
🔐 AI Security is the Next Big Thing: AI is transforming industries, but security risks are growing. AI Security Controls & Governance (AISC&G) is now a top priority for IT budgets, talent strategies, and compliance.
🚀 5 Key Drivers of AI Security Focus:
- AI’s rapid adoption expands the attack surface.
- AI-powered tools create new security blind spots.
- Emerging AI-native tech stacks pose unquantified risks.
- Critical shortage of AI security talent.
- Global AI regulations are increasing compliance demands.
🎯 Career Growth in AI Security
AI security skills can future-proof your career, whether you're technical or not. Learn AI red teaming, secure AI pipelines, and data governance to stand out.
🧠 Change Leadership: Rethinking Economic Models
Challenge outdated financial assumptions that block innovation. Learn how to reframe resistance to change disguised as "financial necessity" and drive impactful transformation.
📚 Exclusive S3T Playbooks & Resources
Access expert insights on AI security, economic trends, and strategic decision-making—helping you navigate today’s fast-changing landscape with confidence.
[emerging tech]
🛡️ Why AI Security is your next big thing
What you don't know can hurt you, or cause you to miss important opportunities. Which AI security skills will you focus on this year?
3 Things Job Seekers, CIOs & CISOs need to know:
- AI is rapidly transforming business operations, automating workflows, and enhancing decision-making.
- As AI's role expands, so do its security risks. AI Security Controls & Governance (AISC&G) is now a top priority in IT budgets, talent strategies, and compliance frameworks.
- AI Security is a hot new career track with great opportunities for those who focus on developing a blend of security and AI skills.
5 factors driving urgent focus on AI Security:
1. AI's Rapid Growth & Adoption: AI is being embedded into nearly every industry, from finance to healthcare to retail, increasing the attack surface exponentially.
2. New Types of Interfaces: AI-powered tools (e.g., Chatbots, AI-driven SaaS, Code Assistants, and Autonomous Agents) create new security blind spots that traditional security teams haven't accounted for.
3. Changing Tech Stacks: Enterprises are shifting towards AI-native cloud solutions that integrate Databricks, Snowflake, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Google Vertex AI, and others - all of which may have unique security risks that are not yet fully quantified. These new risks for the most part do not yet have standardized proven best practices and mitigation strategies. We literally are in a phase of testing and learning.
4. Lack of AI-Specific Security Talent: Companies lack professionals trained in AI Red Teaming, Model Abuse Prevention, Secure AI Pipelines, and Data Governance. This talent gap is making AI Security one of the fastest-growing career opportunities in tech.
5. Regulatory & Compliance Challenges: Governments worldwide are rushing to regulate AI security & ethics (EU AI Act, U.S. Executive Orders, China's AI Laws), meaning companies must now comply with new AI-specific security mandates.
Career Learning Strategies in AI Security
AI Security is a high-value career skill that can help you stand out in the job market even if you're not in security or tech.
How to leverage AI Security knowledge to boost your career:
- Demonstrate Awareness of Key AI Security Risk: Show that you understand today's biggest AI security issues. See Mindgard's resource library.
- Upskill with AI Security Certifications & Training: Gain hands-on knowledge through relevant courses and certifications.
- Apply AI Security to Your Industry: Even if you are not in tech, integrating AI awareness into your skill set can make you a more competitive candidate.
Top AI Security Topics to Learn
- Red Team Testing for AI: Simulating attacks on AI models to identify vulnerabilities before bad actors exploit them. Here is a high level overview of AI Red-Teaming and how it applies to different industries. A more detailed playbook is available here.
- AI Guardrails: Implementing security policies that prevent AI models from making harmful or biased decisions.
- Prompt Injection Attacks: Manipulating AI prompts to make models output unintended or malicious responses.
- Data Oversharing Risks: Preventing AI from leaking sensitive company, customer, or proprietary data.
- Model Hallucinations & Deepfake Risks: Ensuring AI-generated outputs are accurate, verifiable, and not easily manipulated.
Where to find opportunities
- Entry-Level AI Security Opportunities for Interns & Graduates: Consider your fit for roles such as AI Security Research Assistant or AI Solution Tester. Many cybersecurity firms, AI research labs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google DeepMind) or larger organizations investing in AI may offer entry-level positions focused on AI Security & Red Teaming.
- Security & compliance roles: If you’re interested in cybersecurity, mastering AI Security makes you more employable and future-proof. Likewise AI security and controls is rapidly becoming a major focus area for audit & compliance teams.
- Non-Technical Roles: Even if you consider yourself a non-technical candidate/employee, applying AI knowledge to your industry can significantly increase your value. For example blending User Experience (UX) knowledge with AI security awareness can help you design generative AI agents that not only provide a great user experience but also do so securely, in a way that builds customer trust. In fact, going forward Customer Trust + AI Security will go hand in hand.
- Leaders: If you’re a business leader, understanding AI risks helps you make better investment & compliance decisions. Key Resource: 🌟S3T Playbook: Validating AI use cases can help you and your team make better decisions about when and how to invest in AI, and when to pass.
- Healthcare: Cybersecurity and AI are becoming top priority investment areas for all aspects of the US healthcare industry as highlighted by former U.S. National Security Administration Director General Paul M. Nakasone at the 2025 HIMSS conference.
- Don't count yourself out just because you are not in a big city or large metro area: Rural Hospitals face major cybersecurity and AI challenges. To help, Microsoft launched the Rural Health AI Lab (RHAIL), to work with rural healthcare leaders designing generative AI solutions to address unique needs of rural hospitals. See TSI Rural Hospital Cybersecurity Landscape Report 2025.pdf for more details.
Takeaways
AI Security is no longer a niche topic—it’s now a core priority for IT leaders, security teams, and businesses across every industry.
In fact no matter what job you are interviewing for, consider asking: What is your strategy for secure effective AI?
By staying ahead of AI Security trends, you can secure your career, protect your organization, and be part of the next wave of cybersecurity leadership.
🧭 Keep learning with S3T Premium Content: AI Security Playbook: Step by Step Playbook for your first Red Teaming exercise.
[change leadership learning series]
This week's lesson: Identifying economic mental models and their flaws
If you have ever faced individuals or companies who were resisting beneficial ideas or necessary change under the guise of financial necessity, this is the learning path for you. This will give you answers for those scenarios where someone says "that would be great, but we have to be practical" or "we have a business to run".
This advanced learning segment gives change leaders context and insights to challenge the status quo economic thinking that often lurks behind resistance to beneficial change. You'll learn how to address cases where individuals or companies are resisting necessary change, or even opposing the stated mission of their own company under the guise of financial necessity.
Financial decisions are driven by assumptions (economic mental models) about what is possible or not possible. When we make financial decisions without critical examination of these assumptions and economic mental models we hold in our minds, we cause negative impacts to our customers and their communities, and force our companies to generate undesirable outcomes - all under the false notion that we simply had no choice. Learn how to help your leadership team rethink their economic mental models, and start seeing new paths for achieving your mission and goals.
Click here for an overview of the full Change Leadership Learning Series.
Why Change Leadership skills give you a unique edge in the 21st century job market.
[panoramas]
[macro-economics]
Full Access Members: See the S3T Economic Dashboard for the Top 500+ US & International real-time economic indicators.
[playbooks]
- Spend Wisely in a Hype-Driven World
- Gaining Buy-in for Data Modernization
- Flipping the Script: Understanding and Changing Internal & Macro Narratives
- Shift to effective gatekeeping in the age of generative AI
- How to Stop Zombie Projects from Sapping your Focus and Resources
- Harmonize Different Kinds of Expertise to Achieve Success
- Addressing issues related to uneven accountability
- Validating AI use cases
- 6 Proven Ways to Resolve Conflicts
See Full List of S3T Playbooks
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