5 ESSENTIAL SECURITY QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE CONNECTING AI ADD-INS TO YOUR DATA

Connecting any third-party AI add-in to your Excel workbooks—especially those containing sensitive financial, customer, or proprietary data—requires rigorous security vetting. Since these tools transmit your data to an external server for processing, you must ensure the vendor's privacy and security standards meet your organization's compliance requirements.

5 Essential Security Questions to Ask Before Connecting AI Add-ins to Your Data

Here are 5 essential security questions to ask before connecting an AI add-in to your data:

• IS MY DATA USED FOR MODEL TRAINING?

  Concern: Many free or public AI models use the data they process (your prompts and the Excel cells you reference) to train their next generation of AI models, meaning your proprietary information could eventually become part of the publicly accessible model.

  Question to Ask: "Do you or your upstream AI provider (e.g., Open AI, Google) use our input data or the generated output to train any public or shared AI model?" The only acceptable answer for sensitive data is a contractual guarantee that your data is never used for training.

  
  

• HOW IS MY DATA ENCRYPTED IN TRANSIT AND AT REST?

  Concern: When your data leaves your local machine and goes to the AI vendor’s cloud server, it must be protected from interception and unauthorized access.

  Question to Ask: "What encryption standard is used for data in transit (between Excel and your servers) and at rest (on your storage systems)? Do you use AES-256 encryption or similar FIPS-compliant standards?" Ensure they use strong protocols like TLS 1.2/1.3 for transit and industry-standard encryption like AES-256 for storage.

  
  

• WHAT IS YOUR DATA RETENTION AND LOGGING POLICY?

  Concern: Even if data isn't used for training, the vendor might retain logs of your prompts and Excel data for months or years, creating a potential security risk.

  Question to Ask: "What is your data retention policy? How long do you keep logs of my prompts, and the Excel data I input? Do you offer a zero-retention or zero-logging option for enterprise clients?" The goal is to ensure logs containing sensitive data are deleted immediately after the processing is complete.

  
  

• WHO HAS ACCESS TO THE RAW DATA?

  Concern: You need to confirm that human developers or QA teams at the AI vendor cannot view your un-anonymized financial or PII data.

  Question to Ask: "What internal access controls do you have in place? Is our production data physically and logically segmented from your development and quality assurance teams? Is access restricted to a strictly need-to-know basis?" Look for adherence to the Principle of Least Privilege and robust multi-factor authentication (MFA) requirements for their personnel.

  
  

• ARE YOU COMPLIANT WITH RELEVANT REGULATIONS (GDPR, SOC 2)?

  Concern: Using a non-compliant vendor can put your entire organization at risk of regulatory penalties.

  Question to Ask: "Are you compliant with major data privacy regulations like GDPR, CCPA, etc., and do you hold current certifications like ISO 27001 or SOC 2 Type II?" These certifications provide independent third-party validation that the vendor adheres to strict security and privacy protocols.

  
  

Before granting any AI add-in access to proprietary Excel data, treat the vendor as you would any critical cloud partner. By ensuring contractual guarantees regarding data usage (no training), robust encryption, minimal logging, and strict access controls, you can confidently leverage AI's power while safeguarding your company's most valuable information.