A Ban Can Push Workplace AI Use Out of Sight.

Microsoft's 2024 Work Trend Index found that 75% of surveyed knowledge workers used AI at work and 78% of those AI users brought their own tools. Deloitte's 2025 Connected Consumer survey found that work-related use among employed U.S. respondents rose from 6% in 2023 to 34% in 2025; nearly seven in ten respondents who used generative AI at work used their own tools.

Personal logins and devices can put work outside company logging, retention controls, and audit trails. The company may not know which data left or how the output was used.

An employee may paste a contract into an AI tool to finish a task faster, but intent does not change the exposure.

KPMG's 2025 global study with the University of Melbourne covered roughly 48,000 people across 47 countries. Its U.S. results found that 46% admitted uploading sensitive company information or intellectual property to public AI platforms, while 44% used AI at work without authorization or in inappropriate ways.

Deloitte describes shadow AI as partly driven by unmet employee demand. The risk can start with an ordinary copy and paste.

Blocking domains and forbidding tools does not remove the work or its deadline. Employees may switch to a personal phone, account, or home laptop, where the company lacks logging, retention control, and an audit trail.

In KPMG's U.S. results, 53% said they had avoided disclosing AI use and often presented AI-generated content as their own. A ban without a usable sanctioned option can push more activity out of sight.

The organization then has less ability to measure and govern that use.

The approved tool has to compete with the unofficial one. Give employees a sanctioned AI workspace that is easy to use and includes SSO, workspace permissions, data-retention rules, approved models, source citations, audit logs, and upload limits.

Security then gets a record of what was asked, which sources were used, which data stayed inside the boundary, and who approved consequential results. Employees can still get answers quickly.

In 2023, Samsung employees entered sensitive internal information, including source code, into ChatGPT. Samsung then restricted generative AI tools on company-owned devices and internal networks while it worked on internal tools.

The incident shows why employers need controls over which tools may receive company data. A restriction can contain immediate exposure, while a sanctioned alternative gives employees a governed place to do the work.

Your people are already using AI. Decide whether that work happens in personal accounts or a governed company platform.

A personal account puts data on infrastructure you do not own, under retention rules you did not set, with no record of what left the company. A governed platform applies your permissions, audit trail, and approved tools and AI providers while preserving the speed employees want.

We built Sorena as a platform everyone can use for day-to-day work. People can upload the contracts, policies, customer records, and internal knowledge they actually work with, then get answers from the Sorena AI Assistant inside a governed workspace instead of a personal chat window. Those answers are grounded in the uploaded files and cited back to the source.

Everything is grounded in Sorena SSOT, our Single Source of Truth. Uploaded documents stay inside controlled, permissioned workspaces. They are not dropped into a public model's training data. Access is scoped to the people who should have it, every answer is traceable to its source, and the activity is logged. The employee gets the speed they went looking for. You keep the visibility and control you would have lost the moment they opened a personal tab.

Shadow AI spreads when the unsanctioned tool is easier than anything the company offers.

Make the sanctioned platform fast, grounded in company documents, and clearly permitted. Employees then have less reason to use personal accounts, and security can keep the work inside governed boundaries.

Your employees will use AI. Blocking it can hide where company data is going. Give people an AI worth using and keep their documents inside a system you control.