Summary: Employees paste company data into Copilot, ChatGPT and similar tools. Policy, licensing, permission and DLP steps for safe use instead of a blanket ban.

Most of your employees already use AI tools: email drafts, report summaries, code or proposal text. The question is no longer whether to use them, but knowing where company data goes.

1. Separate personal and business accounts

On free and personal accounts, content you enter may be used for model training, depending on the provider's terms. Business plans (e.g. Microsoft 365 Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise / Business) generally commit not to train on your data and provide an admin console. Decide which tool may be used under which terms by reading the contract.

2. Publish an approved tools list

An "AI is banned" policy often leads to hidden use. Instead, write a one-page policy listing approved tools, which data types they may be used with, and which are forbidden (customer personal data, health data, source code, contracts).

3. Clean up permissions before Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot uses files the user can already access. A salary sheet "shared with everyone" is now one question away. Review oversharing in SharePoint and OneDrive before rollout.

4. Use sensitivity labels and DLP

With Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels you can restrict documents marked "Confidential" from going to AI tools or external sharing. Data loss prevention (DLP) rules can warn on or block pasting data such as credit card or national ID numbers in the browser.

5. Consider data protection and cross-border transfer

Sending text containing personal data to an AI service hosted abroad can count as a cross-border data transfer under KVKK or GDPR. Get a legal assessment for such use; anonymise data where needed or choose a model that runs in-country.

6. Consider your own model for sensitive workloads

Where data must never leave the company, open-source models can run on your own servers or on GPU infrastructure in your own country.

Practical tip

For one month, measure from firewall and proxy logs which AI services traffic goes to. Write the policy based on real use, not guesses.

Let's set up safe use together

At Bilgi Teknoloji we plan Microsoft 365 permission clean-up, Purview labels and DLP, and enterprise AI and GPU infrastructure for cases where data must not leave the company.

Ready to use AI safely?

Let's measure current use and agree on the right policy and technical controls.

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