Manage shadow AI by providing approved ways to work

Quick answer

Understand employee tasks, provide approved tools and define clear input rules and exceptions. A ban without a usable alternative can move activity into personal accounts.

Shadow AI includes unapproved chat accounts, extensions, meeting tools, and new AI functions within existing applications. Prohibition without an alternative can push work toward less visible channels.

Start with workflow discovery

Ask departments what tasks they perform, which data categories are involved, and who owns the account. Do not collect entire private chat histories without a defined need. Inspect organizational evidence within a communicated scope. Endpoint Central DLP supports data controls, but should not be assumed to discover every AI tool.

Make the approved list useful

For each tool, document permitted tasks, data levels, approval ownership, access requests, and review dates. Provide suitable alternatives for drafting, meeting summaries, and analysis. Give new-tool requests clear response criteria so approval does not become an indefinite bottleneck.

Maintain account and integration governance

Review organizational account ownership, connected permissions, retention settings, and departure procedures. Track expired exceptions and changes to provider terms. Use proportionate evidence and communicate the monitoring scope.

Implementation checklist

• Provide a reporting route without requiring secret data.
• Approve tools by task and information sensitivity.
• Review extensions and external system permissions.
• Assign account owners and exception expiry dates.

In an illustrative sales scenario, IT offers an approved drafting tool and synthetic-data guidance. Track request turnaround and overdue exceptions instead of treating blocked-site counts as the only success measure.

A scenario to take into your evaluation

Test an AI-tool request from approval through access removal after a role change.

This is a proposed test, not a measured result or customer endorsement. Record the actual platform and edition, owner, expected result and observed outcome before expanding scope.