Developing a Framework for Secure Third-Party Access to Frontier AI

This paper enables secure third-party evaluation of frontier AI models, balancing safety, security and innovation for defence and security stakeholders. This paper delivers a critical framework for securely enabling third-party evaluation of frontier AI models, directly addressing the urgent need for robust safety and security in the defence and security sector as AI capabilities rapidly advance. By mapping the risks and proposing actionable solutions, it empowers stakeholders to balance innovation with protection against emerging threats. The paper introduces a threat taxonomy and an Access–Risk Matrix, providing practical tools for identifying, assessing and mitigating security risks associated with third-party access to sensitive AI models. It calls for a multistakeholder governance framework to ensure that secure access becomes the foundation for safe innovation, not a constraint. This approach is essential for defence and security professionals seeking to harness frontier AI while safeguarding against intellectual property theft, model manipulation and weaponisation by adversaries. As the rate of innovation and deployment of frontier AI models accelerates, ensuring secure and trusted third-party evaluations is a greater priority than ever. Third-party evaluators play invaluable roles in providing accountability, stress-testing and building vital trust in increasingly complex systems and applications. Ensuring development labs and evaluators are sensitised and equipped to actively mitigate potential risks is vital to delivering evaluations at scale, and safeguarding public and industry trust and safety. As part of this project, RUSI has established the Secure Access to Frontier AI (SAFA) Taskforce, drawing together a community of technical experts from labs, evaluators and cyber and information security experts from across sectors to provide an evaluation of third-party access. Account creation is quick, free and gives access to all RUSI research and more Senior Research Fellow Cyber and Tech Research Fellow Organised Crime and Policing RUSI Associate Fellow, Cyber and Tech