Your employees are feeding PII, trade secrets, and client data into ChatGPT and 200+ AI tools right now. When a plaintiff's attorney or regulator asks for documentation, your current tools see nothing. We find what your DLP missed — and build the evidence record before they arrive.
Regulated industries only · NDA signed at engagement start · 2–4 week turnaround · Board-ready deliverables
"Most companies discover their AI exposure in a deposition, not an audit."
Before AI governance policies existed, your employees were already using AI tools. That data is gone—or is it?
Based on 2025 digital forensics research (SIU, DFRWS). These artifacts exist on your endpoints right now.
ChatGPT desktop app stores every "deleted" conversation, API key, and uploaded file in recoverable JSON—even after full uninstall.
Chrome/Edge history files contain AI tool URLs, session tokens, and visit counts. We recover "deleted" entries from disk shadow copies.
DNS queries to api.openai.com and TLS records show gigabytes of proprietary data pasted into AI tools—preserved in your infrastructure.
Installation timestamps, execution counts, and user IDs proving AI app usage—even after "privacy" settings are cleared.
Volatile memory captures active AI sessions, clipboard contents, and pasted proprietary data before it ever hits disk.
Four services available now. No forensic infrastructure required. Deliverable in 2–5 days.
Six practitioner-built compliance frameworks for healthcare, fintech, and legal organizations. Foundation Packs and Implementation Kits available for each industry. No engagement required.
Is that new AI tool your sales team wants HIPAA or SOX compliant? We score it against 8 criteria and return a Go / Conditional Go / No-Go verdict in 48 hours. No endpoint access required.
A Generative AI Acceptable Use Policy written specifically for your industry, regulatory framework, and named roles. Same outcome as the full audit's policy deliverable — without the forensic engagement.
Your IT admin runs a 5-minute read-only script. We scan it for ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and 200+ AI indicators plus sensitive keywords. You get a 2-page risk dashboard — no raw data recovery, no air-gap required.
Full forensic engagements for regulated organizations. If you're not ready for a full audit, see our Quick Start resources ↑ above.
Typically engaged for: active regulatory inquiry, M&A AI due diligence, pre-audit proactive documentation, or insurance underwriting requirements.
For organizations that completed a Tier 1 audit and need ongoing visibility as employees adopt new AI tools.
Available to existing audit clients and partner law firms facing an active regulatory inquiry, breach disclosure, or legal discovery request involving AI tool usage.
Access is through referral from an existing client or partner law firm only. Direct litigation and expert witness services are delivered through our certified forensic partner network.
Request an IntroductionTypically engaged after a Tier 1 audit, following a board mandate or audit committee requirement, or for organizations building a full AI governance program from scratch.
A structured forensic methodology with full technical chain of custody and forensic integrity protocols at every stage.
We focus exclusively on sectors where AI data exposure creates existential legal and regulatory risk.
We defined the category. We run the playbook. No firm currently specializes in uncovering what already happened before your AI policies existed — and the window to act before regulators and plaintiffs do is narrowing fast.
Insurers are adding AI governance questions to underwriting questionnaires. No documented AI controls = policy exclusions or denied claims.
Wrongful termination, malpractice, and data breach suits increasingly demand AI tool usage records. Most organizations cannot produce them.
OCR and the SEC are actively investigating AI tool usage at regulated entities. The question is not if — it's what your documentation shows when they arrive.
For organizations with EU operations, employees, or customers — hard enforcement deadline with penalties up to 4% of global annual revenue.
Methodology informed by emerging 2025 digital forensics research and DFRWS community frameworks
NIST AI Risk Management Framework — risk identification, governance, and response protocols
Article 11 / Annex IV technical documentation requirements for high-risk AI system operators
Article 17 right to erasure implementation guidance and cross-border data flow obligations
Composite findings from methodology validation across common enterprise AI deployment scenarios.
A mid-size regulated organization. Existing DLP solution in place. An acceptable use policy either drafted or in progress. IT has blocked a handful of known AI domains on the corporate network. Leadership considers the AI governance situation handled. From the outside — and from their own audit logs — everything looks fine.
Browser artifact analysis recovers verbatim content from AI sessions conducted over the prior 90 days — including tools the organization has no record of approving. Fragments contain draft contracts, internal financial summaries, patient intake notes, and client communication threads. The DLP solution flagged none of it. Browser history had been cleared on the majority of endpoints. The artifacts remained.
Active authentication tokens for AI platforms outside the organization's approved vendor list are present on most examined endpoints. These tokens grant ongoing access to platforms where prior sessions — and in some cases, uploaded documents — may still be accessible. The employee may no longer work at the organization. The token is still valid.
AI platform conversation exports saved to user download folders — outside any monitored directory, outside any DLP coverage. In several scenarios, these files contain the full text of sessions where regulated data was processed. They are named generically, not flagged, and in some cases forwarded to personal email before departure.
AI writing assistant browser extensions with granted permissions to read and modify content across all sites — including webmail, document editors, and internal portals. These extensions operate outside endpoint DLP, outside network monitoring, and outside the organization's AI tool inventory entirely. Permission was granted at installation. Nobody reviewed it.
Under HIPAA, every cached prompt fragment containing patient information is a potential impermissible disclosure — regardless of whether the employee intended to expose it. Under SOX, AI-assisted financial analysis not archived in enterprise systems creates a documentation gap regulators are increasingly equipped to exploit. Under attorney-client privilege rules, client matter details processed through a consumer AI account may constitute a waiver.
The finding that surprises most compliance teams: the employees were not being malicious. They were being efficient. The tools were useful and fast and nobody told them the session didn't end when they closed the tab.
Findings above reflect composite scenarios developed during methodology validation. Specific artifact types and quantities vary by organization, endpoint configuration, and AI tools in use.
Shadow AI Forensics was built from an observation, not a business plan. Since generative AI tools reached mass adoption in late 2022, the governance conversation has been dominated by two things: policy documents and access controls. Lock down the tools, write a policy, check the compliance box.
"Forensic ground truth: anchor the evidence where you control it, not where the vendor does."
— Harish
Cached prompts stored in browser IndexedDB. Conversation artifacts persisted in local storage. Authentication tokens retained long after a user believes they've logged out. Data that a forensic examiner can recover from an endpoint weeks — sometimes months — after the fact.
We spent two years tracking how organizations were actually deploying these tools: which platforms were being adopted without IT approval, what each platform retained on the endpoint, how long artifacts persisted, and what a plaintiff's attorney or regulatory investigator could reconstruct from a standard corporate workstation. That research became the Shadow AI Forensics audit methodology — not adapted from an existing IT security framework, but built specifically around how these tools actually behave in enterprise environments.
The gap we kept finding wasn't in the AI tools themselves. It was between what organizations believed their controls covered and what was actually sitting on their endpoints. That gap is what we audit.
Shadow AI Forensics is led by Adil, an AI governance and digital forensics specialist focused exclusively on shadow AI exposure in regulated industries.
Litigation support and expert witness services are provided through our partner network of certified forensic examiners where legally required.
Every artifact collected under documented, defensible chain-of-custody protocols aligned with SWGDE and NIST standards.
Every finding is cross-referenced against HIPAA, SOX, GDPR, EU AI Act, and NIST AI RMF for your industry.
Every high-risk finding is manually validated before inclusion in the final report. We don't inflate findings to justify our fee.
Reports can be structured for delivery under attorney-client privilege where legally appropriate — protecting findings from opposing discovery.
Shadow AI Forensics is a specialized consultancy, not a software product. We limit active engagements to ensure every client receives rigorous, hands-on forensic analysis — not an automated scan with a report attached.
Entry point services (Policy Template, Vendor Assessment, Browser Scan) are available to organizations of all sizes.
Answers to what compliance leads, CISOs, and legal teams ask before booking a briefing.
It depends on the engagement tier. The Browser Log Light Scan uses a read-only PowerShell script your IT team can review line-by-line before running — no installation, no persistent agent. Full forensic audit engagements use industry-standard forensic imaging tools, deployed with your IT team present. We never operate unilaterally on your infrastructure.
Only the examiner assigned to your engagement. All data is processed under a signed NDA and our standard confidentiality agreement, executed before any engagement begins. Findings are delivered in an encrypted report. We do not retain client data beyond the engagement period — documented in our evidence destruction certificate, issued at close.
Browser Log Light Scan: 2–3 business days from export receipt to report. AI Vendor Risk Assessment: 48 hours from intake completion. Full AI Exposure Audit: 7–14 business days depending on scope and number of endpoints. Timeline is confirmed at engagement kickoff — we don't start the clock until scope is agreed.
That outcome exists and we'll tell you clearly when it does. A clean finding is a defensible finding — documented evidence that your organization examined its AI exposure and found it within acceptable parameters. That documentation has real value in a regulatory inquiry or litigation context. We don't inflate findings to justify our fee.
DLP and SIEM monitor traffic and flag policy violations in real time. They don't examine what's already on the endpoint — cached browser artifacts, local storage, downloaded conversation exports, browser extension permissions. We examine what your existing tools never saw. In most engagements, the meaningful findings come from artifacts that predate our involvement by weeks or months.
Yes. Where legally appropriate, engagements can be scoped and delivered under attorney-client privilege — typically by routing the engagement through outside counsel. We work with your legal team to structure this at kickoff. Not every organization requires this, but regulated industries facing active regulatory scrutiny or pending litigation often do.
Always. Our standard NDA is executed before we receive any organizational information. For enterprise engagements, we'll work with your legal team's preferred form. If you'd like to review our standard NDA before booking a briefing, email adil@shadowaiforensics.com.
The frameworks are ready to deploy for most organizations — drafted with regulatory specificity for your industry and mapped to current HIPAA, SOX, FINRA, and ABA requirements. Organizations with complex multi-jurisdiction exposure or active regulatory matters should have outside counsel review before finalization. For most, the Foundation Pack is sufficient without that step.
Every day of undocumented AI usage is potential liability. Whether you need a forensic audit or a quick policy resource — there's an entry point for your situation.