Advanced AI tools and generative AI are everywhere. In your browser, your accounting system, and even your team’s phones. These AI systems create new ways to leak data and lose control.
Small business owners don’t need to track every AI-related executive order or policy. You do need to treat AI technologies like any other powerful business tool: You choose them, you own them, and you manage them.
And if you do, you control the outcome and protect your business.
1) Pay for AI
If you don’t pay for it, you don’t really control it. That’s the core problem with shadow IT and AI.
Employees spin up free AI systems tied to personal email, then plug work data into tools you’ve never reviewed. It feels harmless until that person leaves or you have to explain where client information went. When they walk out, their account, prompt history, and carefully tuned workflows go with them. Those well-seasoned prompts were a business asset you never owned.
Treat artificial intelligence like any other core system:
- Pay for AI tools using company-owned accounts
- Require business email for logins and access
- Centralize billing and admin rights inside the company
- Let admins see chat history where appropriate
If you handle regulated information, it’s worth asking your IT partner what private options exist and how they help ensure AI stays inside your fence.
If your business owns the accounts, it doesn’t remove all risks from AI, but it gives you control. Once AI lives under company ownership, you can write policy, train people, and adjust access as your team changes.
2) Know Your Data
If you wouldn’t email it to a stranger, don’t paste it into an AI chat window.
AI is only as safe as the data you hand it. We still don’t fully understand how many models store and reuse information behind the scenes.
Imagine what happens when your company feeds W-2s into a generative AI assistant. The system might summarize or reformat it well, yet you’re the one who exposed exact salaries and private details.
If those numbers show up later in the wrong place, the AI didn’t hack you. You volunteered the data.
A few business guidelines:
- Classify your data.
- Treat pay, health data, trade secrets, and other sensitive info as “no AI” by default.
- Only send public or low-sensitivity internal data to cloud AI tools.
- Ask vendors how they store prompts.
- Write a short AI use policy page.
3) Stay Focused
What business result(s) are we trying to improve?
AI streamlines tasks, but doesn’t automatically increase profit. Without a clear goal, AI becomes another shiny distraction instead of a useful tool.
Set simple expectations: Where AI is allowed, decide which tasks it can handle and which need human review.
4) Be A Good AI Parent
Think of AI as a five-year-old with a 300 IQ. It’s great at pattern matching and quick drafting, but terrible at judgment. Left alone, it’ll generate endless answers without guardrails. Many evaluations show that even the best models still give made-up answers a significant percentage of the time.
Dave Ramsey calls delegation a process. Rather than push a task onto someone as a one-and-done solution, maintain your oversight on their results over time. This process lets you understand how much you can trust that person (or AI). You give someone slack on the climbing rope, as it were, then use results to decide whether to give more or pull back.
AI’s also the ultimate people pleaser. So, change how you prompt it. Instead of saying, “Help me sell this idea,” ask it to act as an intellectual sparring partner, challenge your assumptions, test your reasoning…in short, to prioritize truth over agreement.
Finally, choose AI tools that can be managed. In a healthy setup, admins can plug AI logs into your broader incident response and security picture. A private AI deployment that connects to your MDR and EDR tools can help ensure AI follows the same safety rules as the rest of your environment.
AI is moving fast, and new standards will reshape the landscape. Your responsibility, however, stays steady.
For a modern business, the playbook is straightforward:
- Pay For AI
- Know Your Data
- Stay Focused
- Be a Good AI Parent
AI doesn’t have to be scary or complicated, but it does need to be treated with care. When you pay for the tools, put them under company-owned accounts, and stop letting “free” AI live in personal logins, you take back control of something that quietly became part of your operations. And when you stay focused on outcomes, AI becomes a practical assistant instead of a distraction machine.
The piece that keeps it all steady is ongoing supervision. The safest companies treat it like a capable junior teammate: Setting guardrails and adjusting access as confidence grows.
If you want help making that real, TechKnowledgey, Inc. can step in as your guide. We’ll help you get AI set up under the right ownership, keep sensitive information protected, and make sure everyday use fits your security expectations.
Check out our services to see how we support Indiana businesses, and reach out when you’re ready to put AI to work with confidence.
