Innovate Without Exposing Your IP
Find the gaps. Assess the risks. Keep moving.
Your employees are already using AI. The question is whether you know where your data is going.
Shadow AI, where employees use AI tools without IT oversight, creates data leakage points that traditional security can’t see. A single prompt dropped into an uncontrolled tool can expose proprietary information, violate compliance requirements, and create liability your board is already asking about.
We help you find the gaps, assess the risks, and build a governance framework that lets your team use AI safely. The goal isn’t to block AI adoption. It’s to make it safe enough that everyone can move faster.
The Risks You’re Already Carrying
Shadow AI Data Leaks
Employees pasting sensitive information into public AI tools. Customer data, proprietary processes, trade secrets, all flowing to systems outside your control. One prompt in Slack can create 50 leakage points your security team knows nothing about.
Regulatory Exposure
GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA, the EU AI Act. Compliance frameworks are adding AI-specific criteria for model governance and data provenance. Organizations that haven’t mapped how AI interacts with regulated data are carrying risk they haven’t quantified yet.
Vendor Risk
Your team is adopting AI-powered tools from multiple vendors. Each one has different data retention policies, different security postures, and different levels of access to your information. Without a structured evaluation, you’re trusting each vendor’s marketing claims.
IP Theft & Loss of Competitive Advantage
When proprietary data enters a public model’s training pipeline, it’s gone. Your competitive intelligence, internal processes, and client information can become part of someone else’s AI output. Organizations have already lost proprietary data this way.
What You Get
1. Shadow AI Audit
We map where AI tools are being used across your organization, who is using them, and what data is flowing through them. This includes sanctioned tools, unsanctioned tools, and the gaps between your security policies and actual employee behavior. The audit surfaces the invisible pipelines that traditional IT monitoring misses.
2. Vendor Risk Evaluation
Each AI tool in your stack gets evaluated against data privacy standards: SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA where applicable, and the emerging EU AI Act requirements. We assess data retention policies, model training practices, access controls, and where your data actually goes when it leaves your network. You get a clear-eyed view of each vendor’s actual security posture, not their sales deck version.
3. Risk Scorecard
Every risk gets categorized and scored. You’ll see which exposures are critical, which are manageable, and which are acceptable. The scorecard is designed for two audiences: your technical team (so they can act on it) and your leadership team (so they can report on it). It follows the NIST AI Risk Management Framework structure, which gives your board a recognized benchmark to reference.
4. Governance Framework & Safe Use Policy
The deliverable your team will use daily. We build a practical governance framework that covers: which AI tools are approved and for what purposes, how sensitive data should and shouldn’t be used with AI systems, escalation paths when something doesn’t fit the policy, and a training outline so your team understands the boundaries. It’s a working document designed to be referenced, updated, and enforced.
How the Assessment Works
A structured process that gives you clarity in weeks, not months.
- Discovery & Scoping: We meet with your leadership and IT teams to understand your current AI landscape, compliance requirements, and business objectives. This sets the boundaries for the audit.
- Shadow AI Mapping: Interviews, surveys, and technical review to identify every AI touchpoint in your organization, both sanctioned and unsanctioned.
- Vendor & Tool Assessment: Each AI tool evaluated against privacy and compliance frameworks relevant to your industry.
- Risk Scoring & Prioritization: Findings compiled into a risk scorecard with severity ratings tied to business impact, not just technical severity.
- Governance Framework Delivery: A ready-to-implement Safe Use Policy, approved tool list, and training outline your team can adopt immediately.
- Executive Readout: A board-ready summary of findings, risk posture, and recommended next steps. Clear enough for non-technical stakeholders to act on.
Making AI Safe to Use
The companies moving fastest with AI are the ones that invested early in understanding their risk surface. They know which tools are safe, which data can flow where, and what guardrails keep their teams productive without creating liability. That clarity is what this assessment delivers.
We’ve built managed AI agent systems with security hardening and Zero Trust authentication. We’ve helped organizations design governance frameworks as part of strategic advisory engagements. And we’ve guided companies through the five stages of AI readiness, where governance is a critical domain. This assessment packages that experience into a focused engagement designed to give you a defensible risk posture.
We follow the NIST AI Risk Management Framework as our structural foundation. It’s the leading US federal framework standard for AI risk management, that gives your board a benchmark they can reference with confidence.
Who This Is For
This assessment is designed for organizations that are actively using or planning to use AI, and need to understand their exposure before scaling further.
Business Leaders
CEOs and COOs who know their teams are using AI but lack visibility into the risk it creates. You need something concrete to present to your board, not just reassurance.
Risk & Compliance Officers
Professionals responsible for regulatory compliance who need to extend their framework to cover AI-specific risks. The assessment gives you documentation and a policy structure aligned with NIST, SOC 2, and GDPR requirements.
IT Leaders & CISOs
Technology leaders who can see the shadow AI problem growing but need a structured approach to inventory it, score it, and build enforceable policies that don’t kill adoption.
Fountain City has been very good at providing the desired results without a lot of hand-holding.
They always have our best interests at heart and come to the table with excellent suggestions based on their experience.
Fountain City offers an excellent personal touch and is very approachable while being very professional still.
Fountain City’s results, honesty and attention to detail stand out. They’re very realistic as well.
I’m always confident they’ll take the lead to ensure that the project runs smoothly and in the manner that I expected.
Results and relationships matter to this team, and it makes for a pleasant and productive experience.
