I went down a rabbit hole trying to find the “right” innovation framework. Turns out most of what I believed about innovation was completely wrong.
I spent weeks studying MIT iTeams (for breakthrough tech exploration), Cascading Tree (for strategic alignment), GInI(for systematic enterprise innovation), and Scott Berkun’s The Myths of Innovation. Each framework works in different situations, but none is a silver bullet. And Bell Labs’ history taught me something crucial: pursuing an idea takes fourteen times as much effort as having it.
The biggest lesson? I was waiting for the perfect framework before starting, doing exactly what Berkun warns against. Looking for some system that would remove all uncertainty before I began.
Turns out innovation frameworks are useful tools when matched to the right situation and cultural context. But they can’t replace the courage to start imperfectly, the persistence to keep going, and the genuine curiosity to explore problems worth solving.
Includes a free info-graph with practical scenarios for each framework, diagnostic questions to assess organizational readiness, warning signs of when frameworks fail, and actionable first steps you can try this week.
Following up on my previous post about foundational AI concepts, I’m back with Part 2 of my AI learning journey!
While Part 1 covered how AI works, this post tackles how we can use AI responsibly. A crucial side of AI goes beyond the technical aspects into: governance, ethics, risk management, and ensuring AI benefits everyone.
AI Generated
My AI Governance Notes
I’m sharing my notes below to help others navigate AI governance. These break down complex frameworks into digestible insights.
Note: These are personal notes, not comprehensive guides. Use them as a starting point for understanding responsible AI practices.
Key takeaway: AI governance isn’t about slowing innovation. It’s about ensuring innovation benefits everyone.
Frameworks, Standards, & More
EU AI ACT (risk-based approach)
Risk Categories
Prohibited: Social scoring, subliminal manipulation, real-time biometric ID
High-Risk: Biometric systems, employment, education, law enforcement, healthcare
Data Used: Training data sources and characteristics
Metrics: Performance and fairness measures
Ethical Concerns: Identified risks and mitigations
Deployment Context: Where and how it’s used
Risk Management Key Components
Model Inventory: Catalog of all AI systems
Tiering: Risk-based classification system
Controls: Safeguards and mitigations
Incident Response Plan: Procedures for problems
Human Oversight Levels
Human-in-the-loop: Human makes final decisions. High-stakes decisions. Human-on-the-loop: Human monitors, can intervene. Medium-risk applications. Human-out-of-loop: Automated with oversight. Low-risk, high-volume.
Lately, Iโve been running security assessments on various LLM applications using NVIDIAโs GARAK tool. If you havenโt come across it yet, GARAK is a powerful open-source scanner that checks LLMs for all kinds of vulnerabilities, everything from prompt injection to jailbreaks and data leakage.
The tool itself is fantastic, but there was one thing driving me crazy: the reports.
The Problem with JSONL Reports
GARAK outputs all its test results as JSONL files (JSON Lines), which are basically long text files with one JSON object per line. Great for machines, terrible for humans trying to make sense of test results.
I’d end up with these massive files full of valuable security data, but:
Couldn’t easily filter by vulnerability type
Had no way to sort or prioritize issues
Couldn’t quickly see patterns or success rates
Struggled to share the results with non-technical team members
Anyone who’s tried opening a raw JSONL file and making sense of it knows the pain I’m talking about.
The Solution: JSONL to Excel Converter
After wrestling with this problem, I finally decided to build a solution. I created a simple Python script that takes GARAK’s JSONL reports and transforms them into nicely organized Excel workbooks.
The tool
Takes any JSONL file (not just GARAK reports) and converts it to Excel
Creates multiple sheets for different views of the data
Adds proper formatting, column sizing, and filters
Generates summary sheets showing test distributions and success rates
Makes it easy to identify and prioritize security issues
Here’s what the output looks like for a typical GARAK report:
Summary sheet: Shows key fields like vulnerability type, status, and probe class
All Data sheet: Contains every single field from the original report
Status Analysis: Breaks down success/failure rates across all tests
Probe Success Rates: Shows which vulnerability types were most successful
Why This Matters
If you’re doing any kind of LLM security testing, quickly making sense of your test results is key. This simple conversion tool has saved me hours and helped me focus on real vulnerabilities instead of wrangling with report formatting.
The best part is, the code is super simple; just a few lines of Python using pandas and xlsxwriter. I’ve put it up on GitHub for anyone to use.
Wrapping Up
Sometimes the simplest tools make the biggest difference. I built this converter to scratch my own itch, and it’s been surprisingly effective at saving time and effort.
If you’re doing LLM security testing with GARAK, I hope it helps make your workflow smoother too.
Also, check out my second tool: GARAK Live Log Monitor with Highlights. It’s a bash script that lets you watch GARAK logs in real-time, automatically highlights key events, and saves a colorized log for later review or sharing.
In today’s data-driven world, businesses and organizations generate vast amounts of data every day. Cybersecurity analysts, data engineers, and database administrators are increasingly turning to Large Language Models (LLMs) to help generate complex database queries. However, these LLM-generated queries often don’t align with an organizationโs specific database schema, creating a major headache for data professionals.
This is where SchemaWiseAIcomes in โ a middleware tool designed to bridge the gap between generic AI outputs and the specific needs of your data infrastructure; currently in proof-of-concept stage. With SchemaWiseAI, you no longer need to manually adjust LLM-generated queries. The tool automatically transforms queries to match your exact data schema, saving time, reducing errors, and making data management easier.
What is SchemaWiseAI?
SchemaWiseAIis a middleware solution that adapts LLM-generated queries to match the unique database schemas of your organization. By ingesting your custom data structures, SchemaWiseAI ensures that every query is perfectly formatted and tailored to your needs, removing the need for manual adjustments. This powerful tool makes your data queries accurate, efficient, and easy to use, so you can focus on what matters mostโgetting insights from your data.
Why SchemaWiseAI?
LLMs can produce useful queries, but they often come with generic field names and structures that donโt fit your system. This mismatch requires tedious manual work to adapt each query to your specific data schema, causing unnecessary delays and increasing the chances of errors.
SchemaWiseAI solves this problem by automatically mapping field names and data structures to your custom schema. It makes sure that the queries generated by LLMs are accurate, efficient, and ready for execution in your environment, without the need for manual intervention.
Key Features of SchemaWise AI
Field Name Mapping: Automatically converts generic field names from LLM-generated queries into your custom names.
Query Transformation: Transforms AI-generated queries to fit your exact data schema.
Template-Based Query Generation: Quickly generates queries using predefined templates that match your system.
Example
The current proof-of-concept (POC) version of SchemaWiseAI includes a network proxy mapping feature. Below is a snippet of this mapping, which shows how internal field names used within the organization (on the left) are automatically mapped to new field names. For example, proxy log data with specific field names like “srcip“, “dstip“, “status“, etc., is automatically transformed and mapped to standardized names such as “src“, “dst“, “http_status“, and so on.
The final outcome of this schema transformation appears as follows:
User Prompt Request: List all HTTP GET requests with status 404 from the last hour
Using template query: sourcetype=”proxy” | where mtd=”GET” AND status=404 | stats count as request_count by url, srcip | sort -request_count
Final Query: sourcetype=”proxy” | where method=”GET” AND http_status=404 | stats count as request_count by uri, src | sort -request_count
For more transformation examples, check out Github.
Why Choose Ollama for SchemaWiseAI?
At the core of the current SchemaWiseAI is Ollama (https://ollama.com/), a powerful, local AI platform that runs models directly on your machine, ensuring security, privacy, and speed. Hereโs why Ollama is the ideal platform for SchemaWiseAI:
Privacy and Security: Run AI models locally, ensuring that your sensitive data remains secure.
Customizable AI: Tailor the LLM to your specific database needs with ease.
Real-Time Performance: No cloud latency, providing fast, on-demand query generation.
Cost-Effective: Avoid high cloud processing costs by running everything on your own infrastructure.
To get started with Ollama, review my last post where I shared steps on how to install and configure Ollama on Kali.
Who Can Benefit from SchemaWiseAI?
SchemaWiseAI is designed for professionals who work with data and rely on accurate, fast, and customized queries. Key users include:
Cybersecurity Analysts: Quickly generate and refine queries for security logs and threat detection.
Data Engineers: Automate the process of adapting AI queries to fit specific database structures.
Database Administrators: Ensure that all queries are properly aligned with custom schemas, reducing errors and failures.
Business Intelligence Analysts: Easily generate optimized queries for reporting, dashboards, and insights.
Current Limitations
Support for More LLMs: Expanding beyond Ollama to include platforms like OpenAI and other popular models.
Integration with More Data Schemas: Supporting a wider range of schemas, such as Palo Alto logs, DNS logs, and Windows logs.
Improved UX/UI: Enhancements to the user interface for a more intuitive experience.
Expanded Query Optimization: More features to optimize queries for different platforms and use cases.
To manage scalability limitations: take machine learning, pattern-based learning approach, or a hybrid approach.
Conclusion: Transform Your Data Queries with SchemaWiseAI
SchemaWiseAI is the perfect solution for organizations looking to streamline their query generation process, improve query accuracy, and save time. Whether you’re a cybersecurity analyst, data engineer, or business intelligence analyst, SchemaWiseAI is designed to make working with data more efficient.
By automating the transformation of LLM-generated queries into organization-specific formats, SchemaWiseAI saves you the time and effort needed for manual adjustments. And with future features like broader LLM support, expanded schema integration, and improved user experience, SchemaWiseAI is positioned to become a game-changer in the world of data querying.
Disclosure:
Please note that some of the SchemaWiseAI code and content in this post were generated with the help of AI/Large Language Models (LLMs). The generated code and content has been carefully reviewed and adapted to ensure accuracy and relevance.