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28 May Understanding the Security Impact of AI Chatbots and Assistants
Smart businesses have known for a while that AI isn’t just hype, it’s a serious productivity multiplier. Whether it’s helping your team write reports in half the time, draft emails, summarise meetings, or even debug code, AI assistants and chatbot tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and meeting transcribers are already part of daily workflows. Which is great, until it isn’t.
Because while these tools might help Nick in Ops create better reports, or save Zoe in Finance four hours a week, many of them are quietly working with little to no oversight, and that’s becoming a serious issue for security and compliance.
Let’s break down how we got here, and how to keep moving forward, safely.
The Productivity Rush Creates a Blind Spot in AI
In the rush to boost efficiency, many teams started using AI before the business had time to stop and think about what was actually happening to the data being shared.
A user opens up something like ChatGPT and pastes in a paragraph of client financial data to reformat it. Someone shares employee information to help with drafting an email. Someone else asks their AI note-taker to record a meeting where contracts are being discussed, without getting everyone’s consent.
Tasks are done faster. The results are good. But now that information has gone somewhere unexpected.
The reality is many of these tools aren’t built for business use. Some store prompts, some use them to retrain the model, and some don’t meet basic data residency or compliance regulations. And that’s the problem.
Chatbots are Designed to Remember, Even When They Shouldn’t
Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other generative AI chatbots have become incredibly easy to use. But they weren’t all created with business use in mind.
Inputs are often stored and analysed on shared infrastructure. Some providers allow you to disable this, but unless you’re on a paid, enterprise-grade version (and have configured it thoroughly), any data entered risks becoming part of the tool’s broader learning model.
So if an employee pastes in a confidential client query to draft a better response, that data has now potentially been ingested into a system your business has no control over. It’s not malicious, just a result of users trying to get their jobs done, fast.
The problem is, that these tools are often being used without formal approval, meaning IT and compliance teams have no visibility and no path to mitigate the risk.
AI in Meeting Rooms Raises Fresh Compliance Questions
Meeting transcription and recording tools are another emerging grey area. Some, like Otter.ai and Fathom, automatically record meetings or listen in proactively, and can do so even when only one party consents.
Functionally, they’re hugely useful: clients love getting transcribed notes, action items can be captured automatically, and no one’s stuck scribbling minutes. But usage gets murky fast once you’re dealing with sensitive conversations, regulated environments, or international stakeholders.
Ask yourself:
- Were all participants aware and in agreement that AI was listening?
- Where are those recordings being stored?
- Who has access?
- Are they encrypted? Compliant with GDPR, HIPAA, or other relevant frameworks?
These tools may be fine for some situations. But they’re almost never reviewed company-wide, and that’s when risks creep in.
Microsoft Copilot: Enterprise-grade Security, If You Set It Up Right
Among the new crop of AI assistants, Microsoft Copilot stands apart for one very important reason: it was built from the ground up with enterprise security in mind.
Because Copilot lives inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, and applies your organisation’s existing identity, access and compliance controls, it won’t exfiltrate your data or train on your prompts. Data stays in your Microsoft tenant, meaning it’s protected by the same compliance framework you’ve already put in place.
But here’s the catch: what users see in Copilot is directly tied to what they can access across your files, emails, chats and more.
So if access policies have been relaxed over the years, Copilot could end up surfacing documents or information to users that they were never meant to see. Not because Copilot is doing anything wrong, but because your policies need tightening.
Before switching it on across your organisation, we always recommend carrying out a structured audit to:
- Review who has access to what
- Adjust security groups and permissions
- Revisit data classification and labelling
- Define acceptable usage policies
- Educate teams on what Copilot can (and can’t) see
Once those safeguards are in place, Copilot becomes an incredibly powerful, and secure, tool that supports just about every department in the business.
How We Help Businesses Adopt AI, Securely
AI isn’t something to be afraid of. Quite the opposite, the tools are ready, the value is obvious, and they’re quickly becoming core components of how modern businesses work. But like any major change in tooling or process, success depends on how it’s rolled out.
We help our clients navigate AI adoption in a way that’s secure, strategic, and sensible. That tends to look like:
- Evaluating which tools are already in use (Sanctioned or not)
- Reviewing organisational security policies and how they map to AI usage
- Recommending enterprise-grade tools with strong governance
- Helping configure and deploy platforms like Copilot securely
- Setting up access controls and identity policies that work across departments
- Providing training that enables your team to use AI confidently, without introducing risk
With the right planning, AI isn’t a security nightmare waiting to happen. It’s a business accelerator that your organisation can harness safely.
Talk to Us About Getting AI Right
If your team is already experimenting with AI, or if you’re thinking seriously about deploying Copilot or similar tools, now’s the time to make sure it’s being done right.
We’ll help you figure out what’s safe, what’s not, and how to make it work. Contact us to learn how we support secure, strategic AI adoption for forward-thinking businesses like yours.
