Your staff are already using AI. You just cannot see it.
Shadow AI lockdown replaces uncontrolled tool use with one internal gateway. Pexon audits which AI endpoints your network actually reaches, routes them through a single controlled path that intercepts personal data and secrets, and logs prompts and outputs to a standard an auditor will accept.
The starting point
Prohibition has already failed.
By the time a policy is written, confidential text has been pasted into consumer tools for months. Blocking endpoints moves the traffic to phones. The only workable answer is a sanctioned path that is easier than the workaround.
The scale of the problem is invisible by design: shadow AI leaves no central log, no procurement record and no named owner, so the organisation's exposure is whatever the latest tool's privacy policy happens to be. The gap is not that employees use AI — it is that the use is unobserved, ungoverned and uninsurable.
This engagement exists to close that gap with infrastructure rather than with another document: discover the traffic, route it through one governed path, and log it to a standard an auditor accepts. The goal is visibility, not prohibition.
The two wrong answers
Blocklists lose. DLP suites alone lose. The gateway is the third option.
Deny the endpoints and the traffic moves to personal devices, personal accounts and tools the network never sees. Prohibition without an alternative just relocates the risk to a place you cannot audit. A DLP suite alone has the same blind spot: it can flag documents, but it cannot see which AI tool is asking for them.
The third position is the one that works: every AI tool, sanctioned or not, crosses the same gateway. The gateway can see, route, intercept and log — which is the only position from which a lockdown is enforceable and an audit is answerable. The blocklist fights the traffic; the gateway governs it.
What we build
What the lockdown involves
- Discovery. An audit of which AI endpoints your corporate network actually reaches, so the scale of current use is established from traffic rather than from a survey. The audit alone usually changes the internal conversation, because the measured volume of existing use is almost always higher than leadership expects.
- One gateway. A single internal path for AI traffic, intercepting personal data and secrets before anything leaves your boundary. The gateway applies the same rules to every tool at once — the sanctioned copilot and the unsanctioned chat tool alike.
- Audit-grade logging. Immutable records of prompts, outputs and the datasets involved — the evidence base regulators and your own auditors will ask for. Retention is your decision, and the system makes it configurable and enforceable rather than incidental.
The difference
What changes between the approaches
| Question | Blocklist | Gateway lockdown |
|---|---|---|
| Can you see what is being used? | No — traffic moves to unknown tools | Yes — every endpoint is discovered first |
| What happens to confidential data? | It keeps leaving through ungoverned tools | Intercepted at the boundary |
| Can you answer an auditor's question? | No — nothing is recorded centrally | Prompts, outputs and identity are logged |
| What happens to staff capability? | The workaround becomes the default | A sanctioned path, easier than the workaround |
The gateway is not a stricter blocklist. It is a different position: traffic is governed because it is seen, not because it is forbidden.
What the audit has to answer
Three questions, answered from traffic
A discovery audit that cannot answer three questions is not an audit. Which AI endpoints does the network actually reach? Which of them process data that should not leave? And which teams are the heaviest users, because they are the ones a sanctioned path has to serve first?
The answers come from traffic, not from a survey: proxy and DNS logs show the endpoints, data classification shows what crosses them, and usage volume shows where the governed path has to be good enough to win. That is the difference between a lockdown and a guess — and it is why the audit is the first deliverable rather than a pre-sales exercise.
What changes
- Confidential material stops leaving through unsanctioned tools.
- You can answer what was sent, by whom, and when.
- Staff keep a capability they already rely on, through a route you control.
- The same gateway becomes the foundation for cost control and model routing — governance is built once and reused.
Four weeks plus ongoing operation.
The audit alone usually changes the conversation internally, because the measured volume of existing use is almost always higher than leadership expects.
Where this leads
Governance questions
Will this stop people using AI?
No, and it should not try. The goal is a sanctioned path that is easier than the workaround. Prohibition without an alternative just moves the traffic somewhere you cannot see it.
How long are the logs kept?
That is your retention decision, not ours. The system is built so the answer is configurable and enforceable rather than incidental.
Next step
Not a sales call. An architecture call.
Thirty minutes with the architect who would actually run the engagement.