CISO dodges bullet protecting $8.8 trillion from shadow AI

VentureBeat’s unique interview with Sam Evans, CISO of Clearwater Analytics, reveals why enterprise browsers are shortly turning into the frontline protection in opposition to shadow AI in its many kinds.   

Evans confronted a essential problem in October 2023. Standing earlier than Clearwater Analytics’ board, he needed to confront issues that staff would possibly inadvertently expose knowledge that would doubtlessly compromise the agency’s $8.8 trillion assets under management.  

“The worst potential factor could be considered one of our staff taking buyer knowledge and placing it into an AI engine that we don’t handle,” Evans instructed VentureBeat. “The worker not understanding any totally different or attempting to unravel an issue for a buyer…that knowledge helps prepare the mannequin.”

Right here is our dialog with Evans, edited for size and readability

VentureBeat: How do you see AI shaping cybersecurity right now?

Evans: The assaults have turn out to be considerably extra subtle. If you happen to contemplate it from the angle of a nasty actor, the phishing emails and makes an attempt we obtain have turn out to be way more complicated. Nonetheless, AI additionally possesses response capabilities.

I like to elucidate it to our board, as the final word cat-and-mouse recreation. As dangerous actors begin to use AI to advance phishing, or maybe expedite the time it takes for exploits to emerge after vulnerabilities are introduced, there’s the other aspect of safety practitioners utilizing AI to assist advance how we reply.

VentureBeat: How is AI serving to your defensive capabilities?

Evans: We’ve begun integrating AI into our safety playbooks. By doing so, our safety analysts now spend much less time looking and looking. The AI is concerned within the safety operations heart (SOC) product, conducting its preliminary triage evaluation and saying, “Based mostly on earlier issues that we’ve seen and issues in my mannequin, that is the place I’d wish to information you.”

On the defensive aspect, we’re actually beginning to see AI come into play. CrowdStrike, Sentinel One, Microsoft Defender, the standard prolonged detection and response (EDR) merchandise had been utilizing some machine studying, and they’d get to a likelihood of possibly 85% that this may very well be a risk, however we’re probably not certain. Nonetheless, AI enriches the EDR engine’s skill to achieve the next likelihood fee of figuring out a risk.

VentureBeat: What retains you up at night time on the subject of AI and cybersecurity?

Evans: The factor that does fear me fairly a bit is the deepfakes. You learn a number of tales about individuals utilizing deepfakes to impersonate a CEO to provoke wire transfers. These are regarding as a result of they do look very, very actual.

However the largest concern? The worst potential factor could be considered one of our staff taking buyer knowledge and placing it into an AI engine that we don’t handle, after which it turns into knowledge that helps prepare the mannequin.

VentureBeat: How did you clarify this shadow AI threat to your board?

Evans: I bear in mind when one of many first board conferences I used to be in, they requested me, “So what are your ideas on ChatGPT?” I mentioned, “Nicely, it’s an unimaginable productiveness instrument. Nonetheless, I don’t understand how we may let our staff use it, as a result of my largest worry is anyone copies and pastes buyer knowledge into it, or our supply code, which is our mental property.”

However I didn’t simply come to the board with my issues and issues. I mentioned, “Nicely, right here’s my resolution. I don’t wish to cease individuals from being productive, however I additionally wish to shield it.” Once I got here to the board and defined how these enterprise browsers work, they’re like, “Okay, that makes a lot sense, however can you actually do it?”

VentureBeat: Stroll me by means of your analysis and deployment course of for Island.

Evans: After that October 2023 board assembly, we began a reasonably lengthy due diligence course of. We took a take a look at a few of the main distributors within the enterprise browser area.

I’ll share with you in the end why we went with an Island. We wanted to have the ability to management what browsers persons are utilizing on their endpoints. It doesn’t do any good to deploy an enterprise browser when anyone can go and obtain Opera or “Frank’s browser of the month” and use it, and it simply bypasses all the Island controls.

The opposite cause we went with Island was actually due to the velocity of the deployment. I bear in mind being on a name with Island salespeople, and so they’re saying, “We imagine we will get this deployed in your organization in a matter of weeks.” I’m like, “Oh, that’s BS.”

VentureBeat: However they delivered?

Evans: They took it as a private problem! We began our Island deployment in April 2024 with about 200 individuals. We went the extension route first; the Island extension in Chrome and Edge.

It wasn’t till July when the board requested, “How is it going?” And I mentioned, “How about I simply present you?” I pulled up a screenshot as a result of, you already know, Murphy’s Legislation demos all the time fail. So I confirmed them screenshots, “Right here I’m on ChatGPT. I attempted to stick one thing in. I obtained the immediate: ‘Island coverage prevents you from doing this.’”

They’re like, “Wow, that is improbable! However individuals can nonetheless make the most of the instrument to ask good questions?” I mentioned, “Yeah, completely. They simply can’t put knowledge into it.”

VentureBeat: Do you are feeling that Island assures you and reduces the danger of Shadow AI?

Evans: It undoubtedly has helped us get a deal with on shadow AI. No safety instrument is 100% good. Having deployed Island, we undoubtedly sleep quite a bit simpler. We are able to really feel fairly snug that if an worker goes to an AI occasion that we don’t have licensed, they’ll use it, however can’t paste knowledge or add information.

It’s additionally helped us determine the place we now have gaps. Staff discovered this actually nice AI widget factor, they arrive to the safety workforce, “Hey, look, test this out.” After which we will come again to our product improvement groups and determine how we assist allow this, not only for our staff, however for our clients.

VentureBeat: How do you defend in opposition to deepfakes?

Evans: That’s a tricky one to wrap your arms round. We have now a superb safety consciousness program. We ask staff to make use of frequent sense. Do you actually assume Sandeep Sahai, our CEO, goes to name you up and ask you to purchase him Apple reward playing cards?

We’ve arrange a variety of checks and balances, form of just like the two-person buddy test system. There’s no know-how resolution for one thing like that. It’s a human downside that we’ve needed to implement a human resolution.

VentureBeat: What recommendation would you give different CISOs dealing with shadow AI?

Evans: This isn’t nearly blocking, it’s about enablement. Carry options, not simply issues. Once I got here to the board, I didn’t simply spotlight the dangers; I proposed an answer that balanced safety with productiveness.

Welcome to the shadow AI arms race

Evans’ insights reveal how shortly shadow AI has turn out to be an existential risk to each data-intensive enterprise.  

“We see 50 new AI apps a day, and we’ve already cataloged over 12,000,” Itamar Golan, CEO of Immediate Safety, instructed VentureBeat, quantifying what safety groups are calling their worst nightmare since ransomware.

The onslaught of unauthorized AI use and apps has triggered intense competitors amongst safety distributors. “Most conventional administration instruments lack complete visibility into AI apps,” Vineet Arora, CTO of WinWire, defined to VentureBeat, pinpointing precisely why shadow AI prospers as legacy safety architectures are blind to it.

The seller ecosystem has crystallized into 4 distinct battlegrounds, every with its weapons and weaknesses.

Enterprise browsers lead the cost. Foremost amongst them is Island, which just lately raised a $250 million funding round, a vote of confidence from the investor group. Whereas Island bets on pre-encryption visibility, Google Chrome Enterprise assaults shadow AI in another way, weaponizing its market dominance and Google’s safety stack. Chrome Enterprise Premium delivers knowledge loss prevention (DLP) controls that block knowledge flows to ChatGPT and other AI tools, forestall cross-profile contamination and implement real-time content material scanning. The platform exposes shadow AI usage patterns whereas blocking each unintended pastes and deliberate exfiltration. Strategic partnerships with Zscaler and Cisco Secure Access amplify Chrome’s attain to create an ecosystem the place zero-trust rules lengthen on to AI interactions.

SASE/SSE platforms ship enterprise-scale protection. Netskope and Zscaler convey scale to shadow AI protection by means of their cloud-native safety entry service edge (SASE) architectures. Each platforms course of billions of transactions day by day throughout international infrastructures, with Netskope particularly promoting its skill to watch AI utility utilization throughout enterprises. Their key limitation: When 73.8% of office ChatGPT utilization happens by means of private accounts, SSL/TLS encryption prevents platforms from inspecting content material, forcing them to depend on visitors patterns and metadata, resulting in visibility gaps the place shadow AI operates undetected.

Conventional DLP distributors battle to adapt. Legacy distributors Forcepoint and Microsoft Purview have a robust legacy to commerce on on the subject of battling shadow AI. Forcepoint claims 1,700-plus classifiers whereas Purview leverages AI to triage duties. However right here’s the issue: They’re retrofitting Twentieth-century architectures for Twenty first-century threats. These platforms excel at compliance checkboxes and coverage templates however fail to maintain up with AI’s faster tempo.

As Daren Goeson, Ivanti’s SVP of product administration for UEM instructed VentureBeat: “AI-powered endpoint safety instruments can analyze huge quantities of information to detect anomalies and predict potential threats quicker and extra precisely than any human analyst.” Conventional DLP operates at audit velocity. Shadow AI strikes at machine velocity.

Specialised options fill essential gaps. Innovation thrives within the niches that legacy distributors ignore. One instance is Ivanti Neurons, which delivers complete system discovery by means of its UEM platform, exposing shadow AI hiding in endpoints that conventional instruments miss. Mike Riemer, Ivanti’s Discipline CISO, sees the larger image: “Safety professionals will successfully leverage the capabilities of gen AI to research huge quantities of information collected from various programs.” Dusk, for its half, targets developer groups with transformer fashions, claiming 2x detection accuracy for API primarily based AI instruments.

Evaluating Shadow AI Protection Options

Vendor	Sort	Key Strengths	Limitations	Greatest For
Examine Level Concord	Browser extension	Leverages present infrastructure	Restricted to extension	Examine Level clients
Forcepoint	Conventional DLP	1,700+ classifiers, regulatory compliance	Legacy structure	Extremely regulated industries
Google Chrome Enterprise	Enterprise browser	Market dominance, native integration	Much less specialised controls	Google Workspace organizations
Island	Enterprise browser	Pre-encryption visibility, zero latency, Speedy deployment	Increased value per person	Enterprises with delicate knowledge
Ivanti Neurons	UEM Platform	Complete system discovery	Not browser-specific	Asset administration focus
Microsoft Purview	DLP Platform	Native Microsoft integration, AI-powered triage	Microsoft-centric	Microsoft 365 enterprises
Netskope	SASE/SSE Platform	Complete protection, 370+ AI app monitoring	Put up-encryption complexity	Massive distributed enterprises
Dusk	AI-Native DLP	2x detection accuracy, Transformer fashions	API-only strategy	Developer-centric groups
Talon Cyber Safety	Enterprise Browser	Browser + extension choices	Newer to market	Safety-conscious SMBs
Zscaler	SASE/SSE Platform	536B day by day transactions, true zero-trust	Cloud-only strategy	Cloud-first organizations

VentureBeat evaluation

What’s driving the market to maneuver so quick? VentureBeat’s evaluation discovered 74,500-plus shadow AI apps actively deployed throughout main consulting companies alone, and that’s rising 5% month-to-month. By mid-2026, that quantity may hit 160,000. Every represents a possible knowledge breach, compliance violation, or aggressive intelligence leak.

Arora’s prescription cuts by means of vendor hype: “Organizations should outline methods with strong safety whereas enabling staff to make use of AI applied sciences successfully. Complete bans usually drive AI use underground, which solely magnifies the dangers.”