AI is evolving at an unprecedented pace; from OpenAI to Anthropic, Perplexity to Amazon Nova we had lot to digest in December 2024 and every week, new tools and updates emerge, promising to revolutionize productivity and innovation. While organizations are investing heavily in AI technologies, employees are often a step ahead—bringing their own AI applications into the workplace to stay at the cutting edge. But is it secure and compliant to do so?
Whether it’s a cloud-based tool, a generative AI platform, or a retrieval-augmented generation application, these tools require data to operate, and that’s where the risk begins. When employees adopt unvetted AI tools without IT oversight, they inadvertently expose their organizations to significant security, compliance, and data privacy threats. This trend, which I call Shadow AI, demands immediate attention from leaders across IT, security, and operations.
