Building Trust in AI Companions:Why Security Comes First

The rise of AI marks the biggest technological advancement since the cloud, and AI companions one of the most significant shifts in how we work. Honestly, it feels a little bit like inviting someone new onto your team. Not a faceless tool, but a teammate who sees your calendar chaos, your half-written drafts, your private worries about next week’s presentation... you name it.

And if you are going to invite someone that close into your work life, you should expect the same thing you’d expect from any trusted partner: real security, real accountability, and zero hand-wavy nonsense.

That’s the standard we’re building Ari against.

Where this all started

Before Ariso, I spent years building one of the most sophisticated and respected cybersecurity platforms in the industry - JupiterOne. It was based on a simple principle: security and privacy should be a basic right and a simple truth: trust isn’t a checkbox—it’s a culture. You can’t fake it, you can’t “add it later,” and you definitely can’t warm-glue it onto a system that wasn’t designed for it.

One moment from that era still sticks with me: a CISO friend once told me, “If I don’t trust your system at 3 a.m. when the alarms go off, I won’t trust it at all.” That line became a mental sticky note—and now it sits at the center of Ari’s architecture.

Because AI companions aren’t just software. They see things your coworkers don’t. They process things your boss shouldn’t. They help you think, plan, prioritize, and sometimes even vent.

That level of intimacy demands a level of trust most tools never even aim for.

Security by Design (not by marketing slide)

We built Ari the way I learned to build systems at JupiterOne, at Fidelity, at IBM, at Cisco:
security is the foundation, not the frosting.

Per-User Encryption Every message, every insight, every crumb of data is encrypted specifically to you. Not shared. Not pooled. Not used to “improve the model.” Even if someone broke into our systems (and for our own engineers managing the database), all they’d see is unreadable noise.

Real "Zero Trust" No implicit trust, no shortcuts. Every request and every response is verified.

SOC 2 (and beyond) Third-party testing and audit will always be part of our cadence—not because compliance is exciting (it isn’t), but because it’s the minimum bar for earning your trust.

Privacy: the line we don’t cross

I’ve seen too many companies treat privacy like a “settings menu problem.”
Instead, it’s a values problem.

So here’s ours:

• Your data never trains our models
• You decide what to share and what not to
• Delete what you want, keep what you need
• No monitoring your conversations

Privacy isn’t a feature. It’s a boundary.

Building something that's built to last

Trust isn’t something you declare. It’s something you prove—every day.

So we commit to:

• Transparency that isn’t written by lawyers
• Continuous audits and improvements
• Responsible disclosure partnerships
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance

This is the unglamorous work, but it’s the work that matters.

Behind Ari, are humans who care (probably too much)

Our team is made up of people who have spent years defending critical systems in federal agencies, startups, and Fortune companies. People who know what it feels like to get that 3am call.

And we’re building Ari for ourselves first—because if we wouldn’t trust it with our data, we’d never ask you to trust it with yours.

Where we’re headed

As Ari grows, the mission stays the same:
AI that empowers, not replaces. And trust before everything else.

We’re not just building an AI companion; we’re building a relationship, a partnership—one that earns your trust through action, design, and honesty.

If you ever have questions about how we protect your data, or want to dive deeper into our approach, reach out anytime at hi@ariso.ai.
Or visit our Trust & Security page for more details.

Your trust is the most important part of this partnership—and we intend to earn it, every day.