Shadow AI: A Practical Guide to Using AI at Work Without Putting Your Job on the Line

Your salary depends on decisions you don't even realize you're making every day at work.

If you've ever pasted a customer's details into ChatGPT to draft a faster reply. If your team adopted an AI tool nobody in compliance ever reviewed. If you've felt the quiet pressure of "everyone already uses this" in a meeting.

You've already stepped into Shadow AI territory, and so has almost everyone around you.

This isn't a guide to make you afraid of AI. It's a practical, no-jargon field guide to protect yourself, built around one simple framework: Four Questions you can run through before you paste anything into an AI tool again.

Inside, you'll find:

• The real numbers behind Shadow AI risk (97% of AI-breached organisations had zero access controls)
• The Four Questions framework, with a real-world scenario for each
• Two situations you'll actually face at work, decoded
• A printable Four Questions Card and a personal AI risk self-check
• A plain-language glossary, no compliance jargon

Written by a working cybersecurity and compliance consultant, based on real patterns seen across real audits.

14 pages. Read once, use forever.