Why bother with another framework?
AI is sprinting; risk management is jogging. Every week I meet leaders who rave about GenAI pilots yet flinch when I mention shadow models, bias or the looming EU AI Act. Sound familiar? The gap between innovation velocity and governance reality leaves organisations wide-open to data breaches, fines and dented reputations.
Enter two battle-tested guides from Databricks that aim to close that gap:
- Databricks AI Governance Framework (DAGF) – a five-pillar blueprint with 43 actionable checkpoints.
- Databricks AI Security Framework 2.0 (DASF) – a risk-control playbook mapping 62 security risks to 64 controls across 12 AI system components.
Let’s break them down – minus the jargon.
Databricks AI Governance Framework (DAGF)
What it is: A structured, enterprise-ready roadmap covering everything from strategy and ethics to monitoring and incident response.
Five pillars in plain English
Pillar | What it means for you |
AI Organisation | Clear roles, budgets and KPIs. No more “Who owns this model?” headaches. |
AI Lifecycle | Guardrails for every stage – ideation to retirement. |
Data & Model Governance | Tight lineage, quality gates and audit trails for training data and weights. |
AI Risk & Compliance | Mappings to regulations (EU AI Act, ISO 42001, NIST etc.) baked in. |
AI Ops & Monitoring | Live dashboards, drift alerts and rollback plans. |
Why care? Gartner says models with built-in trust and security see 50 % higher adoption.
AI Security Framework 2.0 (DASF)
What’s new in 2.0?
- 62 clearly defined risks – prompt-injection, data poisoning, jailbreaks, the lot.
- 64 recommended controls – from policy-as-code to red-team playbooks.
- Cross-walks to MITRE ATLAS, OWASP LLM Top 10, NIST 800-53 and the EU AI Act.
In practice: DASF is your “brakes and seatbelts” while DAGF is the “road rules”. Use them together.
Putting DAGF & DASF to work
- Run an assessment
Download the free DASF whitepaper and score each of the 12 components. It reveals quick wins and red flags.
- Build a cross-functional tiger team
Mix legal, security, data and product minds. Give them power to pause releases that break the rules.
- Map controls to tooling
If you already use Unity Catalog, MLflow or Lakehouse governance features, great – line them up against DASF controls. For gaps, shortlist vendors or open-source add-ons.
- Automate “policy-as-code”
Treat guardrails like infrastructure. CI/CD pipelines should fail if a model misses bias tests or lacks lineage metadata.
- Stress-test with red teaming
Use adversarial prompts and data-poisoning drills. Document lessons in your System Security Plan and update continuously.
Common board questions (and quick answers)
- “Will this slow us down?”
No – guardrails free teams from reinventing compliance every sprint. - “Is this only for Databricks?”
Frameworks are platform-agnostic. They map to open standards and can sit on top of any stack. - “Where do we start?”
Watch our 20-minute breakdown on YouTube, then book a discovery call with our cyber-talent team.
Latest episode: All you need to know about DAGF & DASF – watch here
Ready to turn governance into a competitive edge?
SECURE Recruitment connects you with the data, AI and security talent needed to operationalise DAGF and DASF – from fractional CISOs to model-risk engineers.
Book a confidential chat: https://www.secure-recruitment.com/contact
Join the SECURE | CYBER CONNECT community for weekly threat briefings and peer mentoring.
Innovate boldly. Govern wisely. Your customers (and regulators) will thank you later.
