Pre-Flight Checklist: Identify Risks (Post #3 of 20)
What's the risk no one's naming?
How did your confidential quarterly revenue numbers just end up on ChatGPT?
What is the secret data leak thatâs hiding in plain sight?
The unmanaged risk this post focuses on is often overlooked until itâs too late. Youâre building a framework to establish an Enterprise Super Highway for scalable AI, but before you achieve high-speed growth, we must pause and address the hidden structural defects that threaten your entire foundation: Shadow AI.
If I could make this scarier for you to get your attention, I would. Shadow AI is no joke and too often ignored. But since your children may be looking over your shoulder while you peruse Substack or LinkedIn, like mine often do, I offer you one of Disneyâs finest, and most intense, examples of dark shadows manifesting as lurking threats.
Why talk about Shadow AI? My hypothesis aims to expose the potential fact that your employees (no, not all of them), in a frenzied zeal to appease your timelines and information requests, are taking your confidential and proprietary information and exporting them straight into unsecured third-party tools (e.g. chatbots, text summarizers, code generators) to produce a quick win. Did you say you needed a summary of the confidential quarterly report, by noon, but you donât have internal AI tools set up? Guess where the confidential quarterly report was just shared to produce the summary?
Shadow AI creates the purest form of isolated success and it imposes fatal stress fractures across your governance framework.
This threat is existential and every use of Shadow AI violates your data policy and increases threats to your company.
This is a tricky one to solve. The challenge isnât about avoidance stating, âWe wonât use AI.â Thatâs just a surrender to obsolescence. The solution is about smart integration and having a plan. Focus on creating a framework with a governed and secure ecosystem where employees have access to the tools they need to innovate.
3 Steps for Unmanaged Threats.
You canât govern what you canât see.
Zero-tolerance discovery and enforcement.
Deploy a secure alternative, with a framework.
Create a Shadow AI Risk Score.
Test Flight - 48-hour Shadow Audit
Itâs not a question of IF this is happening. The question is âwhat can we do about it?â
Engage. As a leadership team, identify the single most sensitive piece of information in your organization (e.g. proprietary financial data, draft patent or a critical client list).
Search. Ask your IT Security Team, better yet, your Security Red Team, to perform a search for the domain access of the top three consumer AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) within the last 30 days.
Score. The volume you see is now your Shadow AI Risk Score. The immediate corrective action is to create or refine the security policy, create a framework to bring in the tools needed, and communicate it to the teams.
Mission Debrief
Shadow AI is the enemy of scale. By eliminating it, youâre not just managing security, but youâre creating a clear, controlled boundary necessary to build the AI Adoption Framework for your Enterprise Super Highway.
Next Post: âSlop Happens.â
(If youâre not a Disney-lover or youâre easily scared, donât watch the clip and just listen to the glorious rendition of composer Mussorgskyâs âNight On Bald Mountainâ by Leopold Stokowski and The Philadelphia Orchestra, using an arrangement of the music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.)