back
In our last post, we described the previously unidentified risk that organizations are incurring by sending data to AI models or agentic processes. Having email breached by a cyber bad actor using AI techniques is bad enough. But it’s more than just a one-time, static data breach. What this exposes is the fact that the data leaving the company wasn’t visible to its rightful owner.
Your Newest Shadow Systems
Evading email security and DLP tools demonstrates that invisible, unmonitored data flows become powerful shadow systems—completely vulnerable to compromise and loss because you don’t know about them. The breach isn’t a one-time occurrence and neither is the risk. It compounds.
But….I have DLP…and….
Won’t just tighter security controls stop this? They might, but how would you know? Most organizations have those tools and they are still losing data, because current controls fall far short. Teams have no way to benchmark what’s actually still getting through because they can’t see it. We’ll prove that in our next post, with actual examples from customers.
The Monster in the Room
Email is just one part of a much bigger picture. It can get much worse. The real challenge is what’s coming with AI and AI agents.
It’s not just about adding new systems or bolting AI onto aging platforms. It’s the fact that every tool you already rely on—Word, Excel, SharePoint, Salesforce, your HRIS, PLM, or CRM systems—is now being upgraded by the vendor with AI-powered features. While those features might be great for productivity, they also create brand-new risk. AI isn’t just another patch or update—it’s a fundamental shift in how data is accessed, processed, and shared.
So even if your security team has built the perfect safeguards for today’s stack, they’re now at the mercy of how these external vendors choose to implement AI. Unless your team is keeping up with every new feature rollout, understanding how it works, and identifying which data it touches and how the app now uses it, you’re exposed to security risks you didn’t even know you needed to cover.
Where’s the Wizard When We Need Him?
AI and agentic processes have unintentionally created a new requirement for organizations and their security, operational, and IT teams. You have to monitor everything. If you can’t, your risk increases exponentially because you can’t see your data and how it behaves in order to correctly assess risk, prevent loss, or manage AI output.
That sounds like a huge job. It is. Few people are even talking about the fact that your security team is already battling new and emerging threats nonstop. On top of that, they’re expected to track and understand every new AI feature shipped by every company whose software you use. That’s not sustainable—even if it is possible. It’s an exponentially expanding responsibility, one no team can reasonably handle with the workload and resources they have today.
The Wizard Enters the Room
What’s needed is visibility into the flow of data—not just where it’s stored, but where it’s going, what tools and models are accessing it, and how it gets transformed along the way. Especially when it comes to data intended for AI or agentic processes, you need a way to understand and monitor its movement between applications and systems, not just users. Without that, you’re flying blind in a world where your attack surface grows every time someone else releases a new update. In our next post, we’ll show you how a monitor-everything-all-the-time solution. And how easy it is.
Want to see what’s in your data?
Contact us at https://www.flyingcloudtech.com/contact/ or your Google Sales Representative to arrange an assessment. We can implement CrowsNest from Google Cloud or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure on a chosen data store within minutes. We recommend beginning with email data, because it’s mission-critical to most organizations, enables real-time visibility, and represents a significant source of unidentified risk that can be quickly mitigated.