A hosted service is an application or capability operated on infrastructure managed by a provider and accessed over a network. Unlike software installed and run locally, it may leave no model files or runtime on the customer’s systems; access can instead depend on web endpoints, API credentials, and configuration.
Hosted services matter in cybersecurity because they can be easy to overlook in asset inventories and may process organizational data outside directly managed infrastructure. In real deployments, an application or vendor tool may call a provider’s hosted AI service behind the scenes. Defenders can identify these dependencies by reviewing cloud and software inventories, procurement records, network traffic, API credentials, and data flows. To remove or restrict a service, teams may need to disable integrations and revoke credentials, not just uninstall an application.