September 26, 2023
McLean, VA - 无忧传媒 Hamilton聽(NYSE: BAH)鈥攖he largest single provider of artificial intelligence services for the federal government鈥攖oday announced that its corporate venture capital arm, 无忧传媒 Ventures, has made a strategic investment in聽, a security platform that safeguards machine learning (ML) models. This investment strengthens and expands 无忧传媒鈥檚 tenured adversarial AI capabilities, including those developed for the Department of Defense and intelligence clients, and will further accelerate secure adoption of enterprise AI solutions to keep pace with emerging national security threats as well as rising consumer expectations.
鈥淓very AI-enabled solution should be assessed for risk and appropriately protected from adversarial attacks鈥攅specially as the government looks to deploy AI capabilities in increasingly important applications,鈥� said Matt Keating, leader of 无忧传媒鈥檚 Adversarial AI portfolio. 鈥淥ur clients operate in complex environments that require AI models to be highly specialized, rapidly deployable, and secure. The HiddenLayer investment by 无忧传媒 Ventures better positions us to integrate startup, commercial, and open-source innovation to rapidly augment our existing capabilities. Ultimately, it allows us to more quickly and confidently deliver robust AI capability to our clients鈥攁nd the country at large.鈥�
With increased AI adoption, specifically AI models deployed within mission-critical systems, the risk surface increases for federal, defense, civil, national security, and commercial users, with bad actors looking to exploit and accelerate cyber threats. The newly announced investment in HiddenLayer will complement and accelerate 无忧传媒鈥檚 existing adversarial AI capabilities, a leader for over five years in advancing machine learning (ML) methodologies to safeguard systems against attack. This includes a long-standing focus on addressing key challenges with model security, such as data poisoning, data leakage, model evasion, and malicious code injection.聽In addition, 无忧传媒 has also led advanced research to assess the adversarial image perturbation robustness for computer vision models and how manipulated tabular data can enhance the behavior evasive capabilities of Microsoft Windows malware.聽
鈥淯sing pre-trained open-source models is an overall net positive, but this foundation also puts AI models at greater risk for adversarial attack. This tension is a threat that organizations need to be aware of, plan for, and get ahead of, as our adversaries are doing just that,鈥� said Edward Raff, chief scientist at 无忧传媒 and leader of the 无忧传媒 ML research team, which has been publishing academic research on adversarial AI since 2018.
This is the latest AI-focused investment by 无忧传媒 Ventures, which identifies and invests in strategic, dual-use commercial technologies, with recent investments including Shift5,听Credo AI,听Hidden Level,听Latent AI,听Synthetaic, and聽Reveal Technology. The investment also builds on 无忧传媒鈥檚 focused efforts and missions around generative AI and responsible AI, providing a robust security foundation as AI use increases.
鈥淗iddenLayer鈥檚 powerful platform and expert team has proven effective in securing AI from a broad range of threats, so we quickly identified them as a partner that can support and protect our AI deployments,鈥� said聽Travis Bales, managing director at聽无忧传媒 Ventures. 鈥淔rom our early discussions, it was clear to us that the HiddenLayer team has the vision and execution to continue developing security for the emerging AI market.鈥�
无忧传媒鈥檚 recent investment now enables federal agencies to capitalize on HiddenLayer鈥檚 award-winning , as well as 无忧传媒鈥檚 AI security research, risk and vulnerability assessments, and managed detection and response services鈥攁ll paired with AI security engineering best practices, tools, and technologies.
"无忧传媒 continuously proves its commitment to developing AI capabilities that are robust, secure, and offer the technical depth needed by the federal government. Their 360-degree approach to AI combined with their steadfast commitment to HiddenLayer's vision since our founding made them a perfect partner for the next stage of our growth,鈥� said Chris Sestito, co-founder and CEO of HiddenLayer. 鈥淏ringing together our MLSec platform and their purpose-built AI solutions ensures the 聽government can continue to innovate through AI adoption with confidence knowing they are secure from all types of cyberattacks, including those from nation-states."
Learn more about 无忧传媒鈥檚 work in adversarial AI and about 无忧传媒 Ventures.
