AI is only as good as the data it learns from, and attackers are already exploiting that fact. Data poisoning is quickly becoming one of the most dangerous and least understood cyber threats facing organizations.

While your security team focuses on perimeter defenses, attackers are poisoning the data your AI relies on – without ever needing to break into your systems.

What Is Data Poisoning? And Why Should You Care?

Data poisoning is a form of cyberattack where malicious actors corrupt the data fed into AI systems. This can happen during training (model poisoning) or inference (input manipulation), causing AI models to make flawed, biased, or dangerous decisions. 

In federated learning environments, a single compromised device can inject poisoned updates that degrade model performance or manipulate outcomes. In real-time systems, man-in-the-middle attacks can feed altered inputs to AI engines, leading to catastrophic decisions.

The worst part? Most organizations never know it happened until the damage is done.

The Business Impact of Data Poisoning

Let’s be clear: Data poisoning is more than a technical glitch – it’s a serious business risk that can cause:

• Regulatory violations if poisoned AI outputs result in biased or unlawful decisions.

• Brand damage if AI-driven services misbehave publicly.

• Operational failure if corrupted AI models disrupt supply chains or misallocate resources.

• Financial loss as misinformed decisions compound across the business.

Consider this: An algorithmic trading platform ingests poisoned market data that’s been subtly altered in transit by an attacker. The AI model interprets the fake signals as genuine volatility and initiates large-scale trades based on false information. Within seconds, millions are lost, market trust erodes, and regulators come knocking.

That’s not a hypothetical. That’s data poisoning in action, and most firms wouldn’t know until after the losses are locked in.

If you can’t guarantee the integrity of your AI data, you can’t trust the outcomes – and that’s a threat no business can afford to ignore.

Why Traditional Security Fails to Stop Data Poisoning

TLS. Firewalls. Endpoint protection. They all focus on the wrong thing: keeping attackers out.

But today’s adversaries don’t need to break in, they just log in, inject malicious data, and let your AI do the rest.

These outdated defenses don’t validate the integrity of AI data in transit. They don’t protect against data poisoning attacks. And they certainly aren’t ready for post-quantum threats.

The Solution: Certes DPRM Protects Against Data Poisoning

Certes Data Protection & Risk Mitigation (DPRM) is purpose-built to defend against data poisoning by securing AI data in transit with:

• Symmetric cryptography: Uses a single shared secret key per individual data flow for both encryption and decryption with individual rotation schedules, unlike asymmetric systems (e.g., RSA) that rely on public-private key pairs. This symmetry makes it faster and prevents lateral movement.
  
• Quantum-Safe: Symmetric algorithms like AES-256-GCM, are resistant to quantum computer attacks (as verified by NIST) when paired with sufficiently large keys. Quantum computers pose little threat to these systems, ensuring long-term security
  
• No Certificates: Traditional systems like TLS use digital certificates for authentication making them vulnerable to attacks, but Certes DPRM skips this complexity. Instead, it relies on pre-shared secret keys, streamlining the process while maintaining strong protection.

This combination makes the post-quantum-computing (PQC) compliant Certes DPRM a lightweight yet powerful tool for securing AI traffic against both current and future threats. 

Real-World Examples of Data Poisoning Protection

• Federated Learning: Certes encrypts model updates and uses integrity checks to detect and block poisoned data before it corrupts your AI.

• Cloud-Based AI: Certes encrypts input data during transmission, preventing man-in-the-middle attackers from injecting false inputs into AI models.

Future-Proof Protection Against Data Poisoning

While other solutions debate post-quantum readiness, Certes is already delivering it.

Our symmetric encryption model, powered by AES-256-GCM and post-quantum key exchange, meets NIST’s standards for quantum resilience today.

AI workloads demand speed, integrity, and zero compromise. Certes DPRM delivers all three – while neutralizing the growing threat of data poisoning.

If You Don’t Control Your Data, You Don’t Control Your AI

Data poisoning is real. It’s active. And it’s getting smarter.

If your AI can be fed malicious data, it can be weaponized against your customers, your operations, and your business. Certes DPRM ensures that doesn’t happen.

Protect the data. Protect your AI. Protect the business.

Read more about protecting AI traffic with Certes DPRM in our recent whitepaper.