The 5-Minute AI Risk Audit for Business Owners
Don't wait for a data breach to find out where your vulnerabilities are. Take 5 minutes to walk through this checklist. If you answer "No" or "I don't know" to more than two of these, your business is currently at risk.
1. The Inventory Check
Can you name every AI tool currently used by your employees? (Note: This includes "shadow" tools like browser extensions for grammar checking, coding assistants, or free PDF summarizers, not just the big names like ChatGPT.)
2. The Account Audit
Are your employees using corporate enterprise accounts for AI, rather than personal ones? (Personal accounts often default to "save chat history for training," meaning your data becomes their product. Enterprise accounts typically turn this off by default.)
3. The "Red Data" Test
Does your company have a written policy explicitly defining what data is forbidden in AI prompts? (e.g., "Client names, PII, and unreleased code are 'Red Data' and must never be input into an AI tool.")
4. The Vendor Review
Have you reviewed the Terms of Service for your AI vendors regarding data ownership? (specifically: Do you own the output? Does the vendor claim a license to use your input for "service improvement"?)
5. The "Human in the Loop"
Is there a mandatory review process for AI-generated work? (No code, contract, or public-facing content should be published without a human verifying it for accuracy, bias, and hallucinations.)
