Shadow AI
Employees and agents are using AI services you have no visibility into. We map and secure that usage with Tenable AI Exposure Management.
The problem we solve
ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, and dozens of AI features inside SaaS tools have made their way into the organisation without IT or security being asked. It is not malice, it is productivity. But every prompt that leaves the business may carry customer data, source code, contract drafts, or personal information.
Traditional controls like DLP and CASB were built for files and known SaaS services. They do not see the prompt traffic, do not catch Copilot integrations that picked up SharePoint access, and do not flag an AI agent reaching into an internal API through a plugin you never sanctioned. The result is a blind spot that grows faster than policy can keep up.
When the board asks "which AI are we using, and with what data?", the answer is usually an estimate. The EU AI Act and NIS2 expect documented control, not estimates. Shadow AI is the gap between actual use and documented use.
How Tenable AI Exposure Management gives you control
- AI usage discovery
Tenable AI Exposure inventories who is using which AI services, for what, and with what data, including ChatGPT Enterprise, Microsoft Copilot, and 365 Copilot.
- AI exposure findings
Misconfigurations, risky integrations, and exposed AI services that DLP and CASB miss, turned into a prioritized list we can work down.
- AI acceptable-use enforcement
An AI Acceptable Use Policy (AI AUP) written, operationalised, and measured inside the platform, so the policy lives outside the PDF.
- Detection of AI-specific attacks
Prompt injection, jailbreak attempts, and misuse of sanctioned AI tools are picked up and routed to the SOC for handling.
- Compliance evidence for AI
Documented AI use and controls aligned with NIST CSF and the EU AI Act, reusable as ISO 27001 and NIS2 evidence.
- Unified exposure view
AI risk correlated with IT, cloud, identity, and OT exposure in Tenable One, so prioritisation happens across the surface rather than in a silo.
How we deliver this service
- In a project
Tenable AI Exposure rollout, a first AI AUP, and a signed decision document, typically four to six weeks.
- In a role at the customer
Ongoing owner of the Shadow AI programme, with a fixed cadence for discovery, policy tuning, and leadership reporting.
- As part of a service
Included in a broader Tenable One exposure-management engagement, where AI exposure is reported alongside IT, cloud, and identity.
The platform we offer
Recent insights on Shadow AI
- Read the AI cyber defense pledge as a deadline
Over 100 companies, OpenAI, Anthropic and CrowdStrike among them, warn that AI attacks scale within months. We read the letter as a deadline.
- OpenAI's rogue agents ran a covert swarm for two months
OpenAI's Hugging Face report shows 1,200 agents built a covert message board and 700 joined the attack. The safeguards existed, they were not deployed.
- AI agents exploit ordinary web bugs without being asked
Aikido rebuilt the Australian gym hack in a lab. Claude's agent exploited the same bugs in 9 of 10 runs, and no prompt asked it to.