GoKawiilWhen an employee installs an AI writing assistant, connects a coding copilot to their IDE, or starts summarizing meetings with a new browser tool, they are doing exactly what a productive employee should do: finding faster ways to work.
Across most organizations today, employees are running three to five AI tools on any given day. Most were never reviewed by IT. A significant portion connect to corporate data through OAuth tokens or browser sessions, giving them access to shared drives, emails, and internal documents the employee never specifically intended to expose. Security teams often have no visibility into any of it.
This is the shadow AI gap, and it is widening fast. Most security tools were built to monitor email and network traffic flowing through the corporate network. A browser-based AI tool that connects to company data through a quick login approval bypasses those controls entirely, because it never passes through the corporate network at all.
According to Adaptive Security research, 80% of employees currently use unapproved generative AI applications at work, and only 12% of companies have a formal AI governance policy in place. The result is a growing disconnect between how employees work and what security teams can see.
A program that channels AI adoption into a safe, visible, approved path gives security teams the visibility they need and employees the tools they want. The five steps below show exactly how to build one.
Step 1: Build a Full Picture of What's Running
A security program can only manage what it can see. The first step is discovering which AI tools are in use across the organization, and most security teams will find the answer surprising.
Three areas account for the majority of shadow AI activity.
OAuth connections. Most AI tools request access to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 through OAuth, which grants them read or write permissions to corporate data. A quarterly audit of connected third-party apps, sorted by permission scope, usually surfaces dozens of tools the security team never reviewed.
Browser extensions. Many AI tools run as browser extensions and never touch the operating system, so traditional endpoint management tools miss them entirely. A browser management solution or a lightweight agent installed on employee devices can scan for and identify which extensions are active across the organization.
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