Overview
Arm your enterprise against the unknown
Watson Assistant provides large, complex and data-sensitive organizations with the chatbot security and scalability capabilities you need to safeguard against hackers and misuse of customer data, and support your virtual agent during peak times.

Security at every step
Data ownership
Watson Assistant gives you control over your data and insights including the ability to adjust what data is shared and recorded across instances.
Data isolation
To meet the additional needs of enterprise organizations, optional data isolation provides a single tenant data store environment that is physically isolated and not shared with any other user accounts.
Data protection
Know that your data is secure with encryption at rest and in transit using the advanced encryption techniques, as well as options for private endpoints and bring your own keys (BYOK).
Security testing and reviews
We support your data’s and app’s protection against vulnerabilities and chatbot security risks by performing internal and external penetration testing, chatbot security testing, and ongoing reviews.
Access control
Choose who in your organization can view and who can edit individual skills, assistants, and entire instances.
Audit trail
Track what updates were made to skills and assistants to better understand critical actions as they happen.
Compliance and certifications
SOC 2

SOC 2
Watson Assistant on the IBM Cloud is SOC 2 certified.
US HIPAA

US HIPAA
Support is available for organizations using the Watson Assistant Enterprise plan and hosted in IBM Washington, DC and Dallas, TX data centers.
European Union GDPR

European Union GDPR
IBM provides data privacy, security measures and governance to support GDPR compliance.
PCI DSS

PCI DSS
Watson Assistant meets the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) to ensure that companies can maintain the secure environment required to accept, process, store, or transmit credit card information.
Deployment flexibility and resiliency
Enterprise scalability
Low, medium, high usage? Not a problem – Watson Assistant grows with your needs and can scale to meet customer demand.
Deploy on-premises
Run your assistant within your environment using IBM Cloud Pak® for Data.
Run on IBM or other public clouds
Accelerate time to value using IBM Cloud. We can run on Amazon, Google, or Microsoft clouds as well.
High availability and disaster recovery
Our global locations have three data centers at minimum 8 miles apart that operate seamlessly to ensure your assistant’s availability.
Multi-zone region availability
Watson Assistant is deployed with multi-zone regions to support high availability, minimizing customer disruptions and downtime.
Service level agreement
Watson Assistant offers up to 99.9% availability based on your desired plan.
Additional resources
Compliance certification
Explore the full list of certifications and compliance support for IBM Cloud.
Data policy
Read about how data is used and logged in Watson Assistant, as well as how we support compliance requirements.
IBM Cloud Pak® for Data
Learn how we deliver Watson Assistant on-premise or on any cloud on IBM Cloud Pak for Data.
Testimonial
Customer privacy is paramount for us, and IBM’s commitment to cybersecurity and regulatory compliance allows us to rest easy, knowing that our customer data is in good hands.
Bob Beatty
Executive Vice President, Chief Experience Officer
GM Financial
Frequently asked questions
Does Watson store data?
Most of the Watson services are stateless, which means that Watson does not store client data if a client instructs IBM not to use client data to train the base model. Audits are performed internally, but to protect chatbot security and the chatbot data privacy of our clients, we don't share the processes.
Does chatbot technology use artificial intelligence, machine learning or natural language processing (NLP)?
Watson is built on deep learning, machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) models to elevate customer experiences and help customers change an appointment, track a shipment, or check a balance. Watson also uses machine learning algorithms and asks follow-up questions to better understand customers and pass them off to a human agent when needed.
Try out the enhanced intent detection model. This new model, which is being offered as a beta feature in English-language dialog and actions skills, is faster and more accurate. It combines traditional machine learning, transfer learning and deep learning techniques in a cohesive model that is highly responsive at run time. For more information, see Improved intent recognition.
Does Watson support European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance?
IBM is committed to providing our clients and partners with innovative data privacy, security and governance solutions to assist them on their journey to GDPR compliance.
Learn more about IBM's own GDPR readiness journey and our GDPR capabilities and offerings to support your compliance journey here.
Does Watson support Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance?
US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) support is available for Enterprise plans that are hosted in the Washington, DC or Dallas locations. For more information, see Enabling EU and HIPAA supported settings.
Do not add personal health information (PHI) to the training data (entities and intents, including user examples) that you create. In particular, be sure to remove any PHI from files that contain real user utterances that you upload to mine for intent or intent user example recommendations.