Protect a government website by reducing unnecessary internet exposure, keeping its software supported and patched, securing publishing and administrator accounts with strong authentication, and monitoring changes and traffic. AI can help attackers scale reconnaissance, phishing, vulnerability discovery, and malicious content creation, but it does not replace the conventional weaknesses those attacks exploit. If the site includes an AI chatbot or agent, secure that component separately: its access to data and tools creates risks beyond those of an ordinary website.
Understand what AI changes—and what it does not
AI tools can help adversaries produce convincing phishing messages, generate content, and speed up parts of reconnaissance or vulnerability discovery. That can change the pace and shape of an attack; it does not make every incident AI-driven or render established security controls obsolete. Weak access controls, unpatched software, exposed administrative services, and compromised credentials remain important risks.
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NIST’s March 24, 2025 report, Adversarial Machine Learning: A Taxonomy and Terminology of Attacks and Mitigations, classifies attacks against AI and machine-learning systems. It is not a count of AI-assisted attacks against government websites, and it should not be read as evidence of a particular attack rate or success rate.
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Inventory the full public-facing environment
Maintain a current inventory of domains, cloud assets, web servers, APIs, content-management systems (CMSs), staging sites, third-party services, and administration interfaces. For each asset, record its owner, purpose, exposure, dependencies, and the team responsible for updates. An old subdomain or test service can remain reachable even after the project that created it has ended.
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Keep only necessary services reachable
Decide which systems need to accept public connections. Restrict or remove unnecessary services and management access, checking dependencies before making changes so that exposure reduction does not interrupt public services. CISA’s June 4, 2025 Internet Exposure Reduction Guidance recommends identifying internet-accessible assets, evaluating whether exposure is necessary, mitigating risks on systems that must remain exposed, and repeating assessments as environments change.
For exposure-discovery or scanning services, compare asset coverage, authorization controls, false-positive handling, remediation workflow, data handling, agency approval, and support for the relevant cloud and network environment. Scan only systems for which the agency has authorization. CISA’s mention of tools is not a government endorsement of a vendor.
Separate public content from management interfaces
A site’s public pages and the interfaces administrators use to manage devices or networks are different security concerns. CISA Binding Operational Directive 23-02 concerns internet-exposed networked management interfaces. It applies to federal civilian executive branch (FCEB) agencies and requires covered agencies to remove those interfaces from internet exposure or protect them with a separate Zero Trust policy enforcement point. It is not a blanket directive covering every public website or every government organization; CISA encourages other stakeholders to review the guidance, but that recommendation does not make the directive binding on them.
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Keep the web stack supported and patched
Track support status and updates for operating systems, web servers, CMSs, plug-ins, frameworks, libraries, appliances, and other externally reachable components. Prioritize known exploited vulnerabilities and critical vulnerabilities on public-facing systems. Apply security updates promptly, and replace software or devices that no longer receive security support rather than treating indefinite patch deferral as a maintenance plan.
CISA’s exposure guidance recommends patching and replacing unsupported products. Its August 29, 2025 Four Cybersecurity Essentials for SLTTs also stresses prompt updates for critical vulnerabilities, especially on public-facing and legacy systems. Schedule updates with service owners, test changes appropriately, and have a recovery path for a failed deployment.
Protect publishing and administrator identities
Require strong authentication and minimize privilege
Require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for staff and privileged accounts that manage hosting, DNS, cloud control planes, content publishing, code repositories, or remote access. Prefer phishing-resistant MFA where supported. CISA’s October 2022 fact sheet, Implementing Phishing-Resistant MFA, describes phishing-resistant MFA as the most secure form of MFA and notes the federal policy requirement for agencies to adopt phishing-resistant methods. Confirm the agency’s current policy and procurement requirements before setting product requirements or deadlines.
CISA’s 2025 SLTT guidance names physical security keys as a preferred MFA method. Its listed options also include authenticator apps with number matching and one-time codes. Compare available methods on phishing resistance, accessibility, compatibility with identity platforms, account recovery and key replacement, administrative manageability, and applicable procurement or assurance requirements. A FIDO2/WebAuthn security key is one possible physical-key approach; select products through approved agency processes rather than treating any brand or model as endorsed.
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Secure changes and watch for abuse
Protect the path from code change to production
Treat website code, infrastructure configuration, deployment pipelines, secrets, and third-party dependencies as part of the attack surface. Review changes before release, limit who can publish to production, protect credentials and secrets from unnecessary access, and maintain a way to restore known-good content and configuration. These controls apply whether a change is written by a person or generated with AI assistance.
Monitor activity and reassess exposure
Monitor authentication events, privileged actions, publishing activity, application errors, and ingress and egress traffic. Establish a normal activity baseline and investigate meaningful anomalies, such as unexpected administrative changes or unusual service communications. CISA recommends traffic monitoring and routine exposure reassessments; repeat reviews after changes to hosting, services, dependencies, or access paths.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Add AI-specific safeguards when the website uses AI
An AI chatbot or agent embedded in a public site is not the same as the site’s ordinary web infrastructure. First document what the component can read and do: for example, whether it retrieves only public information, accepts user-submitted material, reads internal records, accesses account data or APIs, or can invoke tools that change systems.
NIST’s 2025 adversarial machine-learning taxonomy identifies categories including evasion, poisoning, privacy attacks, and misuse in generative AI contexts. Use those categories to inform threat modeling and testing. CISA and the UK National Cyber Security Centre’s November 26, 2023 announcement of Guidelines for Secure AI System Development emphasizes secure-by-design development and operation. Neither source is a complete website-specific control checklist, so tailor safeguards to the component’s actual access and agency risk decisions.
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- Limit the AI component’s permissions and data access to what its function requires; keep it separated from sensitive systems and records where feasible.
- Assess prompt injection and other misuse, untrusted or poisoned inputs, data exposure, evasion, and abuse of tools or permissions.
- Require human authorization for consequential actions, and test how the component behaves when inputs, tools, or dependent services fail.
- Log relevant activity in a way that supports investigation, while handling sensitive user and agency data appropriately.
- When selecting a model or hosting arrangement, evaluate data sensitivity, provider access, retention and training terms, tool controls, testing evidence, logging, human oversight, and the ability to isolate or shut down the component.
Prepare to respond and recover
Include AI-related components in incident plans when the site uses them. Define how teams will preserve relevant logs, disable a compromised integration, rotate affected credentials, communicate service impacts, and restore known-good systems and content. Assign responsibilities in advance so that a response does not depend on locating an integration owner during an incident.
CISA’s January 14, 2025 announcement of the JCDC AI Cybersecurity Collaboration Playbook describes voluntary processes for sharing information about AI-related cybersecurity incidents and vulnerabilities among government, industry, and international partners. Agencies can consider those channels alongside their existing incident-response and information-sharing arrangements.
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