Wednesday, after I managed to transform two cheese sticks and a pack of chips into a lunch, Marcus, our head of Security, stops me on my way to my coffee with a sparkle in his eye.
“Norm! It’s today! We’re reaching the end of the four-week monitoring experiment!”
“Sure, so what?” Americano, I need that.
“The email I asked Debby to send to stop using all those shadow AI tools! It was in everybody’s mailbox four weeks ago, Monday at 8am, to explain that we’re totally exposed! People had four weeks to stop using them and leverage corporate-approved solutions like Copilot!”
“Oh, OK.” Extra milk. And he follows me to my desk.
“I need you to pull the proxy logs for the last four weeks and run an analysis.”
And he stands next to me, waiting.
So I guess his excitement is now my top priority.
SFTP, Python, and 15 minutes later we look at the report.
Among the Top 10: ChatGPT and Claude, carrying their feud everywhere, even into my logs; CapCut; Granola, Otter, Fireflies (three different AI note-takers); and, oddly leading the board, an AI logo generator.
Turns out it’s the highest traffic of the four weeks, but concentrated on the day the email was sent.
“Can we see who is using this logo thing?”
“Yes...
...
It’s Debby.”
Enough to throw Marcus:
“What??? When??? Hold on, no, it’s a false positive. She was preparing the material for her 50th birthday.”
If you say so. Still, it’s one thing to send emails; maybe she should start reading them…
Now what? My coffee is cold anyway.
“Give me the list, I’m going to chase those users! It’s not acceptable.”
Another hour well spent. Marcus found a way to feel useful playing the bad cop, Debby got her get-out-of-jail-free card as usual…
And nobody is concerned about the fact that Copilot is the least-used tool.
Norm works in IT. He has opinions. They are allegedly his own.