Shadow AI – is it already happening in your customers' businesses without you knowing?

AI has gone from a niche tool to something employees use almost every day – to write faster, summarize documents, generate code, or draft emails. The problem is that a lot of this usage happens completely outside the IT department's view.

This is what's known as Shadow AI: AI tools that employees bring into their work on their own, without approval, documentation, or any oversight from the organization.

Why does this matter?

It's rarely malicious. Most people using AI tools at work just want to get things done faster. But without visibility into which tools are being used and how, risks build up that are hard to spot until something has already gone wrong:

• Sensitive information can leak out. Customer data, contracts, or internal documents get pasted into AI chats without anyone thinking about where that information actually ends up.
• Policies get bypassed. Even if an organization has clear rules for data handling, those rules don't help if employees are using AI tools that were never part of that assessment.
• New attack surfaces are created. More tools and more places where data moves around means more places where something can go wrong.

For many businesses, AI adoption is already happening – the question is whether it's happening in a way that can be governed and protected.

An opportunity for MSPs

This isn't just a risk to warn customers about. It's also a clear opportunity for MSPs to take on greater responsibility for their customers' security – and build a new, recurring service in the process.

With Acronis GenAI Protection, you can:

• See which AI tools are actually being used in your customers' environments, instead of guessing.
• Detect data leakage and compliance risks before they become a problem.
• Package AI security as a new service within your existing offering.
• Monitor and protect AI usage from the same platform you already work in every day.

Instead of adding yet another standalone tool, you get control over AI usage directly within the platform you already know.

Try it free for 6 months

Right now, you can try Acronis GenAI Protection completely risk-free for 6 months. A great opportunity to see how it works in your day-to-day operations and with your customers, before deciding to make it part of your offering.

Want to know more about how to get started? Reach out to us at Gridheart, and we'll show you how it works in practice.