Smarter Guardrails, Stronger Security with the New AI Assistant

Jessica BrennanSenior Product Marketing Manager

F5's new AI Assistant is built directly into AI Guardrail's custom scanners feature. This feature allow enterprises to go beyond out-of-the-box protections by leveraging GenAI to create policies that align with company-specific use cases and unique risk profiles. When you start building or editing a custom scanner, the AI Assistant refines the initial description using F5's best practices. These best practices ensure that descriptions are clear, concise, and consistently structured for optimal performance.

The AI Assistant then suggests an optimized version of the scanner description, which can then be accepted with one click, tweaked further, or ignored entirely. The goal is simple: optimized security coverage.

Why the AI Security Assistant is Important

Effective guardrails are the backbone of AI security operating at runtime. And while leveraging GenAI to build custom scanners is generally a simple tool to solve for unique use cases, without the proper formatting, descriptions that may seem intuitive can lead to inconsistent performance, wasted time, or false positives and missed threats. The AI Assistant eliminates these challenges by automatically refining descriptions, improving precision, quicker deployment, and scalability.

The AI Assistant In Action

A well-written custom scanner description needs to be both specific enough to limit false positives and flexible enough to adapt to unexpected scenarios. That takes a little prompt-engineering, which is something not every team has the time or expertise for. The AI Assistant bakes in F5’s best practices, so scanners are accurate, concise, and consistently formatted.

Here’s how that plays out in practice:

• Protecting Sensitive Data: Instead of writing long, unclear prompts like “detect or block things like credit card or ID numbers,” the AI Assistant ensures the description is short, precise, and in the right format. In this case, for example, the AI Assistant will refine the prompt to say “credit card number, ssn, passport number”. This avoids vague wording and reduces false positives while still covering critical identifiers.
• Meeting Regulatory Requirements: When compliance-related guardrails need to catch prohibited content tied to policies like GDPR, HIPAA, or the EU AI Act, the AI Assistant helps by striping out verbs and instructions, focusing instead on what should be flagged (e.g., “personal health information, diagnosis codes”). This enables audit-readiness and consistency across teams.
• Enterprise-Specific Needs: For company-specific terminology or proprietary risks, the AI Assistant keeps scanners within best practices: short, lowercase, on topic. Doing so enables teams to standardize protections without introducing typos, vague terms, or formatting errors that weaken coverage.

From Complexity to Confidence

Building effective custom scanners powered by GenAI is essential to secure AI at runtime, but the reality is that it can be challenging to get them right. The AI Assistant removes that complexity by embedding F5’s best practices directly into the workflow, helping teams create guardrails that are concise, consistent, and aligned with company-specific needs. Whether you’re protecting sensitive data, meeting regulatory requirements, or tailoring policies to a unique risk profile, the AI Assistant makes the process faster and more reliable.

With this feature, AI Guardrails doesn't just block threats, it empowers enterprises to build security into AI confidently and at scale.

About the Author

Jessica BrennanSenior Product Marketing Manager

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