TrustWorks has been named winner of the “Best Application of AI in Cybersecurity” at the AI Ireland Awards 2025, recognising how our platform helps enterprises detect risks earlier, uncover shadow IT and shadow AI, and strengthen collaboration between privacy, IT, and security teams.
The award was presented by Anna-Marie Turley and sponsored by Enterprise Ireland, and proudly accepted on stage by Lorena Salguero on behalf of the TrustWorks team.
For us, this is not just another trophy. It is validation that the way we approach AI in privacy and cybersecurity is working in the real world, for real enterprise teams, under real regulatory pressure.
The problem we set out to solve
Modern enterprises operate in a constant state of change. New products are launched, code is shipped, vendors are onboarded, and teams spin up new tools and AI projects at high speed.
In this environment:
- Security teams face an endless stream of alerts
- Privacy and data protection leaders must keep up with GDPR, CCPA, the EU AI Act, and sector rules
- IT manages an ever growing web of systems, SaaS tools, and integrations
The real risk often hides in the gaps between these teams.
Shadow IT and shadow AI make this worse. Business units adopt tools and AI assistants outside formal processes. Data flows into new systems that no one has documented. Unsanctioned models are trained on sensitive data. By the time someone realises, the project is already live and hard to unwind.
Traditional governance tools and manual processes cannot keep up. They are reactive, slow, and usually owned by one function, which means:
- Fragmented visibility
- Slow or inconsistent risk assessments
- Compliance treated as a blocker instead of a safety net for innovation
TrustWorks was created to close that gap and turn governance into an engine for cybersecurity resilience, not just a compliance checklist.
How TrustWorks applies AI to cybersecurity in practice
Our platform is built on three layers that work together: Discovery, Context, and Action.
1. Discovery: finding what is really happening
The first problem is simple but brutal: most organisations do not fully know what they are running.
TrustWorks uses AI driven discovery to:
- Scan systems, code repositories, vendor tools, and projects
- Detect shadow IT and shadow AI before they become an incident
- Surface what data, infrastructure, and AI systems actually exist across the business
Instead of learning about a “secret project” the week before launch, privacy, security, and IT teams gain visibility when it first appears.
2. Context: understanding why it matters
Raw technical signals are not enough. Teams need to understand risk in context.
TrustWorks maps:
- Purpose of each system or project
- Ownership and stakeholders
- Data categories, jurisdictions, and regulatory obligations
- Links to existing processes like RoPA, DPIAs, vendor risk, and DSRs
This context bridges the usual gap between legal nuance and engineering detail. It gives all teams a shared picture of what is high risk, what is low risk, and what needs action today.
3. Action: turning insight into outcomes
Insights only matter if they lead to concrete action.
TrustWorks embeds governance into day to day work:
- Real time risk identification for AI systems and high risk processes
- Automated updates to registers like RoPA
- Faster DPIAs and vendor risk reviews
- Integration with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, and email so alerts reach the right people at the right time
AI does the heavy lifting, but humans stay in control. We use a human in the loop architecture so governance experts can review, adapt, and approve decisions rather than being replaced by a model.
Under the hood, this is powered by:
- A code scanner trained to spot vulnerabilities and data protection risks
- Generative AI that explains risks and proposes remediation steps
- Anomaly detection models that flag unusual behaviour, vendor connections, or data flows
- NLP that reads contracts and policies to highlight risky clauses or missing protections
All of this is designed to be explainable, auditable, and aligned with responsible AI principles.
Collaboration as a security control, not a nice to have
A big reason this project stood out to the AI Ireland jury is how we treat collaboration as a core part of cybersecurity, not an afterthought.
TrustWorks Engage, our collaboration module, connects privacy, IT, security, and product teams in the tools they already live in. It makes it easy to:
- Start a risk review from inside Slack or Teams
- Bring the right stakeholders into the conversation automatically
- See relevant context and requirements for GDPR or the EU AI Act directly in the thread
- Capture decisions and actions in a way that is audit ready
The result is a simple but powerful shift. Governance stops being a slow, centralised process and becomes a continuous practice shared across the organisation.
It is the difference between driving without brakes and driving with a high quality braking system. The point is not to slow teams down but to let them move faster with confidence.
Why this award matters for us, and what comes next
Winning “Best Application of AI in Cybersecurity” is a milestone for TrustWorks, but it is also a responsibility.
It reinforces what we have believed from day one:
- AI should empower privacy and security teams, not replace them
- Governance should be embedded into everyday work, not bolted on at the end
- Compliance should support faster, safer innovation, not slow it down
We will continue to invest in:
- Explainable AI, so teams understand and can defend decisions
- Shadow IT and shadow AI discovery, so nothing critical stays hidden
- Predictive risk modelling, so risks are addressed before they escalate
- Deeper collaboration features, so privacy, IT, and security keep working as one
And we will keep working with our community of privacy leaders, CISOs, and governance professionals to ensure the platform reflects real, everyday challenges, not hypothetical ones.
A big thank you
A huge thank you to:
- AI Ireland Awards and the jury for the recognition
- Enterprise Ireland and Anna-Marie Turley for sponsoring and presenting the award
- Lorena Salguero for representing TrustWorks on stage
- Our customers and community members who push us to build something genuinely useful
- The entire TrustWorks team, who keep turning “context aware governance” into something real for enterprises across Europe and beyond
We are very proud of this award. And we are just getting started.
If you would like to see how TrustWorks can help your organisation detect risks earlier, manage AI and data securely, and stay ahead of regulation, book a demo and we will walk you through it in action.
