AI tools like Microsoft Copilot are here to stay. Despite the security risks, businesses continue integrating AI-driven tools like Microsoft Copilot into their IT infrastructure.
There’s no doubt that Copilot is great for enhancing productivity, but if it’s not deployed properly it can potentially expose sensitive data. To address these challenges head-on, Concentric AI has introduced the industry’s first AI-based Copilot Access Governance solution—giving organizations the ability to identify and remediate data access and activity risks.
What are the key Copilot concerns?Â
Copilot’s ability to help users by automatically generating content, analyzing data, and providing insights across various applications can inadvertently lead to overexposure of sensitive information. Put another way, Copilot may access files, databases, and documents that might not always be intended for broad use, which could bring about potential data governance and security concerns.
It’s all about unchecked access to critical data.
There are several issues to be aware of:
1. Copilot will leverage all the data that the employee has access to. Far too often, most employees’ permissions to sensitive data are greater than what they should be entitled to.
2. Copilot results do not inherit the security labels from the source files, which is a serious risk for source files containing sensitive data.
3. The onus is on the employee to double-check the AI’s work and ensure data is classified and assessed for risk properly.
Copilot, when improperly managed, can expose sensitive data like customer information, financial records, or intellectual property to unauthorized users, putting organizations at risk of data breaches, compliance violations, and reputational damage.
Concentric AI’s Copilot Access Governance: an industry first
Recognizing the challenges posed by this open data environment, Concentric AI has created an AI-driven approach to secure Copilot interactions. Copilot Access Governance automatically classifies data and monitors it for risk, making sure that only authorized personnel access or share confidential information.
Concentric AI’s data governance solution revolves around three key functions:
Data access monitoring: Continuously tracks which users are accessing sensitive data through Copilot and alerts administrators to unusual access patterns.
Risk detection: AI-driven analysis identifies risky sharing behaviors or excessively permissive access to prevent unauthorized parties from viewing sensitive files or databases.
Automated response: When a potential risk is detected, Concentric AI provides remediation recommendations or triggers actions to block risky access attempts before they lead to a data breach.
Concentric AI provides a layer of protection for both structured and unstructured data across an organization’s infrastructure, and works in conjunction with our data security posture management (DSPM) functionality.
How does Concentric AI help secure Copilot?
Concentric AI leverages sophisticated natural language processing capabilities to accurately and autonomously categorize data output from Copilot into categories that include privacy-sensitive data, intellectual property, financial information, legal agreements, human resources files, sales strategies, partnership plans and other business-critical information.
Concentric AI can analyze the output from Copilot to discover sensitive information – from financial data to PII/PCI/PHI — and label the data accordingly to ensure that only authorized personnel have access to it.
This also ensures that employees don’t have to worry about labeling the output, resulting in better security.
Once that data has been identified and classified, Concentric AI can autonomously identify risk from inappropriate permissioning, risky sharing, unauthorized access, wrong location etc.
Remediation actions, such as changing entitlements, adjusting access controls, or preventing the data from being shared, can also be taken centrally to fix issues and prevent data loss.
Best of all, Concentric AI allows organizations to address Copilot’s security risks without having to write a single rule.
Why does this matter?
Enterprises today are increasingly relying on AI-powered tools to optimize their workflows, and with that comes the growing responsibility of maintaining robust data security protocols.
Comprehensive DSPM functionalities are crucial when deploying and using Copilot to ensure that organizations balance Copilot’s productivity increases with protecting sensitive data.
Concentric AI’s new functionality is a result of our customers’ requests as they look to leverage Gen AI tools, and we worked quickly to deliver this industry-leading data security governance for their information protection needs.
By introducing the first-of-its-kind Copilot Access Governance solution, Concentric AI stands out in a marketplace where competitors do not support this functionality.
Concentric AI gives organizations the confidence to adopt Microsoft Copilot without worrying about unintended data exposure or compliance issues.
