Artificial Intelligence has rapidly become part of everyday business operations. Employees use ChatGPT to research information, developers rely on coding assistants, marketing teams generate content with platforms, and support teams leverage AI-powered productivity tools.
While these technologies can significantly improve efficiency, they also introduce new challenges for IT, cybersecurity, and compliance teams.
Organizations often establish policies that define which platforms employees may use, what data can be shared with AI services, and how AI should be integrated into business processes. The challenge is ensuring those policies are actually being followed.
Employees frequently adopt new technologies, products, and services without involving IT or security teams. This behavior, often referred to as Shadow IT, can introduce significant security, compliance, and data governance risks. The growing use of AI tools and services, commonly known as Shadow AI, is a prominent example of this challenge.
For example, an employee may upload confidential documents to an external AI service to summarize a report or generate content. Even if this is done with good intentions, it may violate company policies, industry regulations, or customer agreements.
To effectively govern AI usage, organizations need answers to questions such as:
Without proper network visibility, these questions are difficult to answer.
Profitap IOTA provides application-level visibility into more than 3,000 applications and protocols, including many of today's most widely used AI services. This enables IT and security teams to identify, monitor, and analyze AI-related traffic across the organization.
So far, Profitap IOTA can identify AI platforms such as:
|
Assistants & LLMs |
Generative Platforms |
Productivity & Specialized Tools |
|
|
|
By identifying which platforms are in use, organizations can establish a baseline of approved AI services, detect emerging applications, and uncover Shadow AI activity before it becomes a security or compliance concern.
The first step in monitoring AI activity is understanding what normal behavior looks like.
By continuously monitoring network traffic, organizations can establish a baseline of AI-related activity across users, departments, locations, and applications.
For example, an organization may officially approve Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and Gemini for business use. By monitoring network activity with Profitap IOTA, security teams can verify that employees are using approved tools while simultaneously detecting unauthorized services such as Character.AI, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Grok, or other emerging platforms.
This allows organizations to enforce AI governance policies using actual network evidence rather than relying solely on user reporting or endpoint controls.
Once a baseline has been established, deviations become easier to detect.
Examples include:
These deviations may indicate policy violations, the adoption of Shadow AI, or potential security concerns.
With Profitap IOTA, security and network teams can identify AI-related traffic across thousands of applications and services. The L7 Applications dashboard provides visibility into AI applications detected on the network.
4. Click an application and select View Details to open the filtered Data Details view. Here, you can identify the client IP addresses using the application and review associated traffic details.
This helps security teams answer a critical question: Are employees using only approved AI services, or are unapproved platforms already operating within the organization?
Many AI platforms operate from globally distributed cloud environments. When users interact with AI services, traffic may traverse multiple countries, cloud providers, and data centers before reaching its destination.
For organizations operating under strict regulatory requirements, understanding these traffic flows is increasingly important. This information supports compliance efforts and helps organizations evaluate the risks associated with specific AI providers.
Consider an organization that enforces strict cybersecurity and AI-use policies to protect business operations and intellectual property. By monitoring their network with Profitap IOTA, they can establish a baseline for AI traffic, identify anomalies, detect unauthorized use of the platform, and confirm that approved tools are used in accordance with internal policies.
Organizations cannot manage risks they cannot see, and they cannot enforce policies they cannot verify. By monitoring AI traffic across the network, organizations can establish baselines, identify Shadow AI, investigate anomalies, and validate policy compliance.
Profitap IOTA provides network-level visibility to understand how AI is used across the organization, helping IT and security teams make informed decisions as AI adoption continues to accelerate.
As AI becomes embedded in more business processes, monitoring AI traffic is no longer just a security requirement. It is a fundamental component of modern AI governance.