Why
About 75% of your company's confidential data is already inside a public AI model. Not stolen. Pasted, by your own people.
75% is my number, not a study's. I cannot prove it, and you cannot prove it is five percent, because only one company in five can see what sensitive data reaches AI tools. Until you show me your number, mine stands. The people who measure traffic, rather than run surveys, see this:
A ban does not stop the flow; it stops you seeing it. Shadow AI went from 20% to 43% of security incidents in a single year (IBM, 2026). And offboarding takes back the laptop, not the ChatGPT account.
The three rules
What is out does not come back. You can only make it worthless.
An official AI that beats the shadow one
Company sign-on, no training on your data, a log. If it is worse than the ChatGPT in someone's pocket, you lost on day one.
First sprint, in practice: read-only, one source such as the open-items list, with the user's own ERP rights. No second permission model. Yury Pakhomov, from the Sweden thread, 30 October 2026
Block the crown jewels, not everything
Credentials, source code, customer data, prices, personal data: stopped before they reach the prompt. Everything else stays open.
AI goes into onboarding and offboarding
The official account from day one. When someone leaves, every secret they touched is rotated the next morning.
The AI budget is the security budget. Not the other way round.
Seven questions to ask your CISO this week
Assume Leaked becomes a Monday-morning conversation, not a slogan.
The seven questions (PDF)
A short worksheet: seven questions that turn the principle into decisions about your data, your contracts, what leaves, and what you tell a client who asks.
In the conversation
The principle is being coined in public, on LinkedIn: argued, corrected, extended by the people who read it. Read the threads, disagree in them.
From the comments
- "Access beats IQ." The approved tool wins on what it can read, not on model quality. Yury Pakhomov
- "Better says nothing about authorised." Culture, training and DLP are not optional; matching every alternative is not the aim of governance. Angelique Dawnbringer
- "What makes Microsoft more trustworthy?" Nothing. It is paperwork, not trust: the approved tool is the one already under contract. Svend Videbaek
- Can we prove which data was exposed, which agents accessed it, and whether their permissions were revoked? Saliha Abid
- Who has the authority to switch an AI tool off at 2 a.m., and have they ever been asked to? Mada Petrea
- Which AI tools are your people already using that security has not approved? CyberGlobal
Use the term
Use it in your policy, your talk, your article. Keep the wording, credit the source, link this page. Tell me where it went and I link back from here.
On LinkedIn: #AssumeLeaked
Talks and press
The talk
Assume Leaked: what to do once you stop pretending. Twenty or forty-five minutes. The room leaves with the three rules, the seven questions, and one number to argue about.
For CIO and CISO audiences, security conferences, and leadership offsites. In English or Romanian.
Press
Interviews and contributed pieces: write to alex@cube-enterprise.com.
Every number on this page has a named source. The one estimate, 75%, is mine and is labelled as such.
Download the press kitWhat's next
Assume Leaked Report 2026
A survey of employees at large companies in Germany and the UK on what actually goes into AI tools, who keeps the account after they leave, and whether a ban changes anything. Published in December. Follow on LinkedIn to get it first.
Sources
- LayerX, AI & SaaS Data Security Report 2025: 77% of AI users paste data into prompts; 82% of pasting comes from unmanaged accounts; generative AI is 32% of corporate-to-personal data flow.
- Cyberhaven, AI Adoption & Risk Report 2026: 39.7% of AI interactions contain sensitive data; one sensitive input every three days per employee.
- Netskope, Cloud and Threat Report 2026: 47% of generative AI users use personal accounts; source code, IP and credentials reach AI tools.
- Netwrix, Data & Identity Security Report 2026: 21% have full visibility into sensitive data reaching AI; 31% can fully block it.
- IBM, Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026: shadow AI from 20% to 43% of incidents; 68% of breached companies had no AI governance.
- Vanta, data from 15,000+ companies, 2024–2026: 70% have shadow AI; employees reinstall tools IT revokes.
- Samsung, 2023: generative AI restricted after employees put source code into ChatGPT.
- TechRadar, 26 October 2026: the Swedish government blocks ChatGPT and Claude for officials; Copilot kept under tighter controls.
75% is my estimate. Every other number above comes from the reports listed.
Author
Alexandru Ciobanu is CEO of CUBE Enterprise, a consortium of eight Romanian technology companies with 2,500+ specialists working for enterprises in Germany, the Nordics, the UK and the US, and Chief Growth Officer of WE AS WEB. Before that, eight years on the delivery side: HARMAN, Tremend, ALTEN. Sixteen years in competitive judo, six on Romania's national squad.
LinkedIncube-enterprise.comalex@cube-enterprise.com
First public use: September 2026 (talk), 15 October 2026 (LinkedIn). This page is the canonical definition; later wording changes are listed here with their date.