Acronis GenAI Protection: When AI Tools Become a New Attack Surface to Manage
Generative AI has become part of everyday work in a very short time. Employees use ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity and similar tools to write faster, summarize documents or solve problems, often without IT ever knowing. That combination, rapid adoption paired with little visibility, is exactly what turns GenAI into a growing security problem for SMB environments.
The issue is rarely the technology itself. It's that these tools show up alongside established policies rather than within them, with no control over what information gets sent out or what risk quietly builds up under the radar. Employees paste customer lists, contract text or code into a chat window to save time, without considering that what they type can be stored, reused or leaked. For clients who expect their provider to manage exactly that kind of risk, it creates a gap that needs closing.
Three parts of the same problem
Acronis GenAI Protection, built natively into Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, addresses that gap in three steps.
The first is visibility. Without insight into which AI tools are actually being used, by whom and how often, there is nothing to govern. The feature maps AI traffic per endpoint and surfaces shadow AI before it turns into an incident or a compliance issue.
The second is stopping data exposure before it happens. Prompts are inspected for sensitive content such as personal data, health information, payment card data, credentials and material marked confidential. Unauthorized attempts to send that kind of information to public or unsanctioned AI services can be blocked outright, without getting in the way of productivity.
The third layer is about detecting and blocking harmful or policy-violating prompts, including prompt injection attempts and other techniques designed to manipulate how the AI model behaves or bypass the controls in place.
How it works in practice
Everything is managed centrally in Cyber Protect Cloud, where policies are configured and the mode is chosen: detect-only to build a behavioral baseline and observe activity, or block to actively stop violations. The unified Acronis agent on each endpoint monitors AI usage in real time, detects risks such as data leakage or malicious prompts, and acts according to the policy that's been set. Everything is logged back to a centralized event log with dashboards and reporting, making it easy to track trends, document actions taken and refine policy over time.
The difference from many standalone AI security tools is that none of this requires a separate console or another product to run. It's part of the same platform already handling backup, EDR and the rest of cyber protection, which keeps operational overhead down for whoever has to run it.
What this means for you as an MSP
For an MSP, this is rarely just a technical add-on. It's a way to turn a question clients are already asking into a service that can be billed. Many clients are already worried about how their staff is using AI, without knowing how to actually manage it. Being able to show real usage data, set policies and report on the outcome moves the conversation from vague concern to concrete risk management, and positions the MSP as the party actually in control of what's happening.
It also makes it possible to say yes to AI adoption instead of blocking it outright, which is a stronger position both commercially and for the client relationship in the long run.
To see how it works in a real environment, visit the product page for Acronis GenAI Protection. For a deeper look at the reasoning behind it, the webinar From Shadow AI to Secure AI is available on demand.