Shadow AI is the use of artificial intelligence tools by staff without the approval or oversight of the IT or security team. The main risk is sharing confidential data, such as contracts, source code or customer information, with external services that may store it. It is a form of shadow IT and is managed with acceptable use policies and approved AI tools.
Related term in this glossary: Shadow IT
unauthorized AI use, unsanctioned AI tools, shadow AI risk, AI acceptable use policy, generative AI data leakage
Related terms
Data controller and data processor
A data controller is the person or organization that decides why and how personal data is processed; a data processor handles that data on the controller's behalf, such as a payroll or cloud provider. Under the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), a processor may act only on the controller's documented instructions and under a written contract.
Data retention
Data retention is the policy that defines how long an organization keeps each type of information, in what format and when it must be securely deleted, based on legal, tax and business requirements. It includes the litigation hold, or legal hold, which suspends the deletion of emails and files related to a lawsuit or investigation until the legal team releases it.
DSPM (Data Security Posture Management)
In cybersecurity, DSPM (data security posture management) is an approach and a category of tools that discover where sensitive data lives across cloud and on-premises systems, classify it and review who can access it. For example, a DSPM tool flags a copy of a customer database sitting in a publicly accessible cloud storage bucket.
Tokenization
Tokenization is a technique that replaces sensitive data, such as a credit card number, with a meaningless substitute value called a token. The real data is stored in a separate, secured vault. This lets a merchant process recurring payments without storing card numbers in its own systems, which reduces the scope of its PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) assessment.
End-to-end encryption
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a method that protects a message or file so that only the sender and the recipient can read it, because the decryption keys exist only on their devices. Not even the service provider can see the content. Apps such as WhatsApp and Signal use it, as do business tools for sharing sensitive files.
Ready to put this into practice in your operation?
Tell us what you need and a TecnetOne engineer will get back to you.
Talk to an engineerTalk to an engineer
Tell us what you need and we’ll reply the same business day.