Security Governance And Compliance
Topic
Name: Security, governance, and compliance
Why it matters for FDE roles: Customer environments often include sensitive data, enterprise permissions, regulated workflows, and approval requirements.
Plain-English Definition
Security protects systems and data. Governance defines who is allowed to do what and how decisions are controlled. Compliance checks whether the system meets required rules, policies, or standards.
Where It Shows Up
- Job listing signal: security, privacy, compliance, governance, enterprise AI, permissions, audit.
- Portfolio project connection: Ops Knowledge Copilot should handle source permissions, human approval, audit logs, and safe tool access.
- Real customer scenario: A customer wants AI over internal docs but only for users who already have access to those docs.
Core Concepts
- Authentication: proving who the user is.
- Authorization: deciding what the user may access or do.
- Least privilege: exposing only the required data and actions.
- Audit logs: recording access, changes, approvals, and tool calls.
- Data privacy: limiting what sensitive data enters prompts, logs, or third-party services.
- Policy controls: enforcing rules in code, not only prompts.
Failure Modes
- Treating prompt instructions as the only safety mechanism.
- Ignoring document or record permissions during retrieval.
- Logging sensitive data unnecessarily.
- Giving AI tools broad write access without approval.
- No audit trail for customer-facing or compliance-sensitive actions.
Tiny Practice Task
Write a permissions checklist for an AI workflow that reads customer records and drafts updates but cannot write without approval.
Interview Language
One sentence I could say in an interview:
In enterprise AI work, I separate model behavior from system controls: permissions, validation, audit logs, and approval paths need to be enforced outside the prompt.
Relevant work experience for this topic.