Enterprise AI Gateway Security Checklist
The controls required before an AI gateway is trusted with customer data, provider credentials, and production billing.
An AI gateway occupies a sensitive position: it receives customer instructions, holds provider credentials, controls execution, and records usage. Security must be built into the request path rather than added to the dashboard later.
Minimum controls
The following controls should exist before meaningful production traffic is accepted.
- Tenant-scoped authorization on every resource
- Hashed, scoped, expiring, and revocable API keys
- Provider credentials stored only in trusted server environments
- Encryption in transit and at rest
- Data-classification and provider-allowlist policies
- Append-only billing and audit events
- Support access that is temporary and fully audited
- Backups, restore testing, and incident procedures
- Prompt and output content excluded from normal logs
Defense in depth
Application authorization and database row-level security should independently protect tenant data. External GPU workers should receive short-lived signed jobs rather than database credentials. Billing should fail closed whenever the authoritative ledger is unavailable.