Unveiling Risks Associated with AI-Driven Services

The Situation

Devence supported an HR tech start-up, which uses AI capabilities and scientific video technology to provide a hiring software solution to organizations that help them to acquire the right talent that fits their company culture.

Using this AI-powered software in a recruitment context raised key concerns especially in data privacy, digital ethics, cyber security, and AI governance. Questions that arose included: “Is the data processed in line with GDPR?” and “How is the AI model trained and what ethical implications does it impose?” To demonstrate credibility and transparency to its stakeholders, the company engaged with Devence to better understand and improve its overall posture in these areas.

Helping the company with these questions would provide the foundation for sustainable growth. Further, the independent and objective assessment we, as Devence by Deloitte, provide, will help them gain trust vis-a-vis their stakeholders, including clients, regulators and the wider public.

The Solve

Devence gathered a multidisciplinary team to address these concerns all at once and create a comprehensive path for the company's responsible growth.

We kicked off the engagement with several in-depth interviews to establish the company’s current position in terms of data privacy, digital ethics, cyber security, and AI governance. The input from these interviews allowed us to perform gap assessments per topic, with the goal of providing a detailed report with a per-topic roadmap for the company to follow.

For Data Privacy, overall data governance and lawful data processing were focused on as these areas relate to the organizational and operational structures which are foundational to handling personal data. For Cyber, the focus was on the overall governance, internal controls, cloud security and cyber resilience, as these were deemed the most critical areas to be addressed at the starting point of the company’s cyber journey. And to assess the company’s overall AI governance capability, we used our AI governance quick-scan focusing on digital ethics and potential model biases, keeping the implications of EU AI Act in mind. This assessment provided an outside-in perspective that tracked considerations around the solution's impact throughout the development lifecycle. These assessments were aimed at improving the company’s credibility and trustworthiness towards its (corporate) clients and key stakeholders.

To finalize the engagement and ensure a smooth understanding of our detailed report, we held a workshop where we provided practical guidance based on our observations and recommendations as presented on the roadmap to all relevant stakeholders including the co-founders, engineers, and developers from the company. As the company is a startup, the roadmap was tailored to their growth path and presented recommended actions with varying degrees of immediacy for them.

The Impact

Overall, some of the most relevant highlights are as follows:

1. The company invested in a stronger risk awareness culture and increased the efforts towards mapping risks associated with their business operations in the areas of data privacy, digital ethics, cyber security, and AI governance, and could therefore make better-informed decisions, aligned with the principle of responsible growth;
2. .The recommendations were focused on enabling the company to further strengthen their credibility and trustworthiness, thus gaining a competitive advantage in more smoothly acquiring new clients to use their recruitment software. They can more confidently present their data privacy, AI governance, and cyber security credentials to new business prospects, as and when requested of them.

Conclusion

This engagement demonstrated our approach of using our deep industry knowledge and expertise to provide bespoke solutions that address the specific challenges of a startup. More so, we did this using a multidisciplinary approach, blending insights from various fields. This embodies what we, as Devence, want to achieve – delivering tailored solutions that fuel responsible growth for startups and scaleups. We are encouraged by the positive feedback received from the company and to know that we have contributed towards their journey of growing responsibly.

Do you want to know more or have any questions about how we can help your start-up or scale-ups grow responsibly? Get in touch!