We have established a basic AI policy, but our operations manager wants to integrate some of our proprietary client data with third-party tools to automate workflow routing. How do we evaluate the safety and data security of an external AI vendor without having to hire an enterprise IT consultant?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You do not need an expensive IT consultant to evaluate the security of third-party AI tools. Your leadership team can protect your proprietary client data by asking vendors a few simple, non-technical questions during your evaluation process.

First, ask the vendor if your data is used to train their public models. Any reputable business tool must guarantee that your data remains siloed within your secure instance. If they utilize the OpenAI API or similar enterprise services, their terms of service usually state that data sent through the API is not used for model training. Ensure this is explicitly written in your service agreement.

Second, verify how access is controlled within the platform. Your operations manager must be able to restrict permissions so that only authorized team members can access sensitive client information.

Finally, frame this evaluation as a standard operational risk assessment. Incorporate these security questions into your standard software vetting process. By establishing these guardrails, you can confidently integrate AI into your operations, prioritizing use cases that improve efficiency while keeping your business data completely secure.