Risk Management: AuditBoard Acquires FairNow to Ensure the Secure Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Enterprise

This acquisition is part of a trend of strong growth and continuous innovation for AuditBoard, which recently won three gold medals in the G2 rankings for the excellence of its risk and compliance management software. The acquisition of FairNow thus enhances the California-based company’s offerings with tools dedicated to compliance and security for artificial intelligence (AI) systems—a topic that has become essential for organizations worldwide.

According to AuditBoard’s latest report (Risk Intelligence Report), the situation is urgent: more than two-thirds of companies acknowledge that they do not yet have the processes, tools, or skills needed to properly manage the use of AI internally.

New Regulatory Challenges: GDPR and the European AI Act

The rapid adoption of generative AI is prompting governments to tighten regulations. For businesses, navigating this legal landscape is becoming a headache that can prove very costly if handled incorrectly:

• The European AI Act: This legislation classifies AI tools according to their risk level (from “low” to “unacceptable”). Companies are legally required to inventory their tools, audit the quality of the data used, and demonstrate that a human retains control over the machine’s decisions, or face heavy fines.
• The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation): The use of AI must not violate privacy. Training an artificial intelligence model using customer data or personal information without explicit consent is now subject to severe penalties.

Key Features: How the FairNow Platform Protects Businesses

Based in Virginia, FairNow has developed a comprehensive solution that enables organizations to monitor and control the use of AI within their operations, even in highly regulated sectors (finance, human resources, healthcare).

Its platform provides an automated response through three key features:

• Automatic creation of an AI registry: The software identifies and lists all AI applications used within the company, whether they are official or installed by employees without the IT department's knowledge.
• Automated risk assessment: FairNow assigns a risk score to each AI model based on its use, the source of its data, and its potential impact on the business.
• Continuous compliance monitoring: The platform compares the behavior of algorithms with current regulatory frameworks in real time, immediately alerting teams in the event of a deviation.

Real-world examples of AI risks that companies must manage

The integration of FairNow into the AuditBoard catalog helps address very real threats to executive liability:

• Leaks of confidential data: Employees who copy and paste strategic source code, financial reports, or customer data into public AI tools to summarize a text. Without oversight, these trade secrets end up in the public domain.
• Algorithmic discrimination (bias): AI software used by human resources departments to sort through thousands of resumes that begins to systematically eliminate candidates based on unfair criteria due to a poorly designed training history.
• Factual errors (“hallucinations”): A virtual legal or financial assistant that generates false information or a false calculation. If the company submits this data to a client or regulator, its credibility and legal liability are at stake.

“The rapid adoption of AI makes robust, connected governance essential. The integration of FairNow strengthens our platform and enables us to offer the most comprehensive solution on the market in the face of rapidly expanding technological risks,” explains Raul Villar Jr., CEO of AuditBoard.

Guru Sethupathy, founder of FairNow, shares this enthusiasm, seeing this partnership as “a way to democratize intelligent, automated, and responsible AI management.”