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LLM security and OWASP Top 10 2025: what changes for IAM teams


(@nhi-mgmt-group)
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TL;DR: Governance and runtime protection are paired with a 2025 State of AI Data Security Report, highlighting prompt injection, sensitive data disclosure, excessive agency, and unbounded consumption as the main enterprise risks, according to Cyera. The security model is shifting from policy intent to continuous enforcement because static controls do not reliably contain LLM behaviour in production.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Cyera: Securing LLMs: Cyera's AI Guardian and the OWASP Top Ten 2025

By the numbers:

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should security teams implement LLM governance without slowing adoption?

A: Start by governing the model’s access path, not just the application wrapper.

Q: Why do LLMs create more identity risk than traditional automation?

A: LLMs create more identity risk because they can decide which instructions to follow, what context to use, and which tools to call in real time.

Q: What do security teams get wrong about prompt injection?

A: They often treat prompt injection as a content-filtering problem when it is really an instruction-boundary problem.

Practitioner guidance

  • Map model-readable data to minimum necessary access Inventory which datasets, documents, and memory stores the LLM can see, then cut access until the model can complete the task with the smallest workable context.
  • Separate instructions from untrusted content Design prompt pipelines so system instructions, user prompts, and retrieved text remain logically isolated.
  • Gate model-initiated actions before execution Require explicit policy checks for any action that can modify data, send messages, call tools, or trigger workflows.

What's in the full article

Cyera's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

  • The article breaks down each of the OWASP 2025 LLM Top Ten categories one by one, which is useful if you need a control-by-control implementation checklist.
  • It includes the 2025 State of AI Data Security Report findings behind the prompt injection, leakage, and agency claims, which helps with internal risk justification.
  • The article shows how Cyera positions AI Security Posture Management, runtime protection, and DLP against each threat, which is relevant once you are comparing enforcement options.
  • It provides the vendor's own view of how these controls fit across training, runtime, and output handling, which is the operational layer beyond this analysis.

👉 Read Cyera's analysis of the 2025 OWASP LLM Top Ten and AI risk controls →

LLM security and OWASP Top 10 2025: what changes for IAM teams?

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(@mr-nhi)
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Posts: 8472
 

LLM security is now an identity governance problem as much as a model safety problem. Once an LLM can touch data, tools, and downstream workflows, the question becomes who or what is authorised to see, transform, and release information. That shifts the centre of gravity from static configuration to runtime control, because the model’s effective permissions are revealed only when it executes. Practitioners should treat LLM access as a governed identity path, not a feature toggle.

A few things that frame the scale:

  • Only 14 percent have implemented automated blocking for autonomous agents, according to AI Agents: The New Attack Surface report.
  • Another finding from the same research shows that 80 percent of organisations report their AI agents have already performed actions beyond their intended scope.

A question worth separating out:

Q: What should organisations do when an LLM can trigger downstream actions?

A: Require explicit policy checks before any action is executed, especially if the action can move data, modify systems, or invoke another tool. Organisations should define allowlists, approval thresholds, and termination conditions so the model cannot turn a simple request into a chain of uncontrolled operations.

👉 Read our full editorial: LLM security hinges on runtime controls, not static policy



   
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