New award: baseVISION receives Microsoft Data & AI Azure Specialization!

We are delighted to announce another significant milestone for us—the achievement of the prestigious Microsoft Cloud Security Specialization! As a Solutions Partner for Data & AI (Azure), we possess comprehensive expertise to help customers manage their data across multiple systems so they can develop analytics and AI solutions.

We took this opportunity to interview Thomas Kurth (CEO) on topics related to AI, our strategy, and cybersecurity.

baseVISION has been awarded the “Data & AI Security” Solution Designation. What benefits does this status offer baseVISION and its customers?

Thomas: The Solution Designation has no direct impact on our customers but shows that baseVISION is engaging with edge technologies and integrating them into services to provide the greatest possible benefit to customers.

How does baseVISION itself use AI services? And are there already customer services that use AI?

Thomas: baseVISION began early to internally evaluate Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. The focus was particularly on data protection and compliance. How can we ensure that our data is protected? How can we prevent misuse of the technology, etc., needed to be clarified. Especially because Copilot is very supportive and strong in information gathering and integration, it is important that the authorization models are correctly and thoroughly tested before a broad rollout occurs.
baseVISION was also part of the Design Partner Group for Copilot for Security to evaluate the impact of this new tool on our future work. In addition to the two Copilots, baseVISION has created dedicated OpenAI instances in Azure to take on tasks for specific use cases. By creating dedicated repositories with data and plugins, we were able to generate significant benefits for specific users integrated with Microsoft Teams.

AI is also booming in cybersecurity. How can artificial intelligence contribute to improving cybersecurity, and what challenges are associated with it?

Thomas: AI is advancing everywhere. Now it is important to find out where this new technology can support us. In the field of cybersecurity, I often hear from customers that they can save costs with it. I do not agree with that, because the attacks have also changed. The attackers are now also using AI in their scenarios, and therefore it is more of an arms race to be able to effectively protect oneself in the future. So AI certainly helps us reduce effort in some areas, but on the other hand, it also requires many resources to keep up with the attackers.

Are there recommendations you see for other companies and their employees?

Thomas: It is important that access permissions in the system landscape are correctly configured or that data is properly labeled with Microsoft Purview Information Protection to ensure that employees cannot suddenly access inappropriate data. It must be noted that employees may already have the necessary permissions but have not yet accessed the data. The real problem, therefore, does not lie in tools like Copilot or AI, but in the fact that permissions have not been correctly managed in the past.