AI Glossary
Supply Chain Security
The practice of protecting the software, models, datasets, and dependencies used within AI systems.
Supply Chain Security
Overview
Modern AI systems rarely operate in isolation.
Organizations often rely on open-source software, pretrained models, cloud services, third-party libraries, and external datasets.
These dependencies can accelerate development.
They can also introduce risk.
Supply Chain Security focuses on protecting the components, dependencies, and external resources that support AI systems.
A helpful way to think about supply chain security is inspecting ingredients before preparing a meal.
Even a well-designed recipe can be affected by compromised ingredients.
Similarly, AI systems depend on trusted components to operate safely and reliably.
Supply chain security helps organizations evaluate and monitor dependencies before they become part of production systems.
As AI ecosystems become increasingly complex, supply chain security is becoming an important part of responsible AI development.
Why It Matters
Supply chain security helps reduce risks introduced by third-party software, models, and datasets.
Real-World Example
A company may review open-source AI libraries and pretrained models before incorporating them into production systems.