The Problem Lakera Addresses

As generative AI and large language models have become integral to modern software applications, they have introduced an entirely new category of security concerns. Traditional cybersecurity tools were not designed to handle the unique attack surfaces presented by AI systems. These include:

• Prompt injection attacks, where malicious actors craft inputs designed to manipulate an AI model into ignoring its original instructions or behaving in unintended ways.
• Data leakage, in which sensitive or confidential information is inadvertently exposed through model outputs.
• Jailbreaking, where users attempt to bypass built-in safety measures and content restrictions.
• Generation of harmful, toxic, or inappropriate content.
• Hallucinations and factual inaccuracies that can undermine trust and cause real-world harm.

Lakera focuses on building tools and safeguards that mitigate these risks, allowing organizations to adopt AI technology with greater confidence.

Products and Services

Lakera Guard

Lakera Guard is the company's flagship product, a security solution designed to protect large language model applications in real time. It functions as a protective layer that sits between users and the underlying AI model, inspecting inputs and outputs to detect and block malicious or unwanted activity.

Key capabilities of Lakera Guard include:

• Detection and prevention of prompt injection and jailbreak attempts.
• Identification and filtering of personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive data to prevent leakage.
• Content moderation to detect and block toxic, harmful, or inappropriate material.
• Protection against the disclosure of confidential system prompts and proprietary instructions.
• Detection of hallucinations and factual inconsistencies.

Lakera Guard is designed to integrate easily into existing AI applications through a straightforward API, allowing developers to add robust security controls with minimal engineering overhead. It is model-agnostic, meaning it can protect applications built on a wide range of underlying LLMs, whether commercial or open source.

Lakera Red

Lakera Red is the company's AI red teaming offering, providing organizations with adversarial testing services for their AI systems. Red teaming involves proactively probing and attacking an AI application to uncover vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by malicious actors. Through Lakera Red, companies can stress test their generative AI deployments, understand their weaknesses, and remediate issues prior to launch. This service supports organizations in meeting security assurance requirements and building more resilient AI systems.

Threat Intelligence and Research

A distinctive aspect of Lakera's approach is its foundation in continuous security research and threat intelligence. The company maintains an extensive and growing database of AI attack patterns and vulnerabilities, which informs the effectiveness of its detection capabilities. This intelligence is continually updated to keep pace with the rapidly evolving threat landscape surrounding AI systems.

Gandalf

One of Lakera's most well-known contributions to the AI security community is Gandalf, an interactive educational game that challenges players to trick an AI into revealing a secret password across increasingly difficult levels. Gandalf became widely popular and served as both an engaging demonstration of prompt injection vulnerabilities and a valuable data source for understanding how people attempt to manipulate AI systems. The insights gathered from millions of interactions with Gandalf have helped strengthen Lakera's security products and raised broader awareness about the risks associated with large language models.

Security, Compliance, and Risk Management

Lakera's offerings are firmly rooted in the domains of security compliance and risk management. As organizations across regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, and government adopt AI technology, they face growing pressure to ensure their deployments meet security standards and regulatory requirements. Lakera helps organizations address these obligations by providing controls that support responsible and compliant AI adoption.

The company aligns its work with emerging AI governance frameworks and security standards, including considerations related to the OWASP Top 10 for Large Language Model Applications, which catalogs the most critical security risks facing LLM-based software. By mapping its protections to recognized frameworks, Lakera helps customers demonstrate due diligence and manage the risk associated with AI systems.

Target Customers

Lakera serves a broad range of organizations, from technology startups building AI-native products to large enterprises integrating generative AI into existing workflows. Its customer base includes companies that require robust security guarantees before deploying AI in customer-facing or mission-critical roles. The developer-friendly nature of its tools makes them accessible to engineering teams, while the enterprise-grade capabilities meet the needs of security and compliance stakeholders.

Approach and Differentiation

Lakera distinguishes itself through several key attributes:

• A specialized focus on AI security, as opposed to general cybersecurity, giving it deep expertise in the unique challenges of protecting generative AI.
• Real-time protection capabilities that operate with low latency, ensuring that security measures do not degrade the user experience.
• A data-driven approach informed by one of the largest known collections of AI attack data, gathered in part through initiatives like Gandalf.
• Ease of integration, enabling rapid adoption without extensive reengineering of existing systems.
• A commitment to staying ahead of an evolving threat landscape through ongoing research.

Conclusion

Lakera AI represents a focused and specialized response to one of the most pressing challenges in modern technology: securing artificial intelligence systems as they become embedded in critical applications. By offering products such as Lakera Guard and Lakera Red, alongside educational initiatives like Gandalf and a strong research foundation, the company provides organizations with the tools they need to deploy generative AI safely, responsibly, and in compliance with security and risk management requirements. As AI adoption continues to accelerate, Lakera's work in protecting these systems positions it as an important player in the cybersecurity ecosystem, particularly within the growing niche of AI security, compliance, and risk management.