Security & governance
In engineering, a plausible-but-wrong answer is worse than none. So every North Arc workflow is governed, validated and auditable before your team relies on it — structured around the NIST AI Risk Management Framework.
Our approach
Generic AI tools index what's written down and answer confidently either way. That's the opposite of what an engineering team needs. North Arc's trust mechanism is concrete: expertise captured and validated by your own senior engineers, answers that show their reasoning and sources, and a measured accuracy score you can see before anyone relies on the system. The sections below map those practices to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology's AI Risk Management Framework.
The NIST AI RMF, applied
The framework organises AI risk management into four functions. Here's what each means — and the concrete North Arc practice behind it.
Govern
A culture of risk management — roles, accountability and policies.
Map
Establishing the context, intended use and risks of the system.
Measure
Assessing, benchmarking and tracking risk with evidence.
Manage
Prioritising and acting on risks across the system’s life.
Trustworthy AI
NIST defines seven characteristics of a trustworthy AI system. Each one maps to something we do on every engagement.
A measured accuracy score on 100+ expert-verified golden Q&A pairs before anything goes live.
Out-of-scope and low-confidence questions defer to a human — the workflow is built to say “ask an expert” rather than guess.
Runs inside the AI tools and environment you already secure. Engagements are under NDA — nothing new to lock down.
Each workflow has a named expert owner, and every answer shows its reasoning and the sources behind it.
It walks the decision the way your best engineer would — steps and citations visible, not a black box.
Trained only on your products, your data and your experts’ knowledge. Your data and knowledge assets remain yours.
Grounded in your validated engineering knowledge, not generic web data; your experts review and sign off on the golden set.
Your data & control
The workflow is trained on your products, your data and your experts' judgment — and it runs on the AI tools you already use and secure. Nothing proprietary locks you in: if you ever walk away, the captured knowledge and the golden Q&A set are yours to keep. Every engagement is under NDA, and your data and knowledge assets remain yours throughout.
Talk it through
Bring your security or compliance lead. I'll walk through exactly how a workflow is validated, what stays in your environment, and how accuracy is measured and maintained.
Prefer email? Reach me directly at mhamid@northarceng.com
The NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0) is a voluntary framework published by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. North Arc structures its governance practices around it; alignment is not an audit or certification.