Copilot Studio is another of the many Microsoft products branded “Copilot.” A non-technical user can build a bot front-end to search internal enterprise data — you type in a query and Copilot Studi…
if you’re forced to deploy this stupid garbage, treat RAG like a poorly-secured search engine index (which it pretty much is) or privacy-hostile API and don’t feed anything sensitive or valuable into it
document the fuck out of your objections because this stupid garbage is easy to get wrong and might fabricate liability-inducing answers in spite of your best efforts
push back hard on making any of this stupid garbage public-facing, but remember that your VPN really shouldn’t be the only thing saving you from a data breach
if it already got force-deployed, start noting risks and finding the problem areas you can identify post-hoc, and speaking with people to raise alert level about it
probably a lot of people are going to be in the same position as you, and writing about the process you go through and whatever you find may end up useful to others
on a practical note (if you don’t know how to do this type of assessment) a couple of sittings with debug logging enabled on the various api implementations, using data access monitors (whether file or database), inspecting actual api calls made (possibly by making things go through logging proxies as needed), etc will all likely provide a lot of useful info, but it’ll depend on whether you can access those things in the first place
if you can’t do those, closely track publications of issues for all the platforms your employer may have used/rolled out, and act rapidly when shit inevitably happens - same as security response
whenever any of this dogshit comes up, I have immediately put my foot down and said no. occasionally I have also provided reasoning, where it may have been necessary/useful
(it’s easy to do this because making these calls is within my role, and I track the dodgy parts of shit more than anyone else in the company)
well we’re talking about data across a company. Tho apparently it does send stuff back to MS as well, because of course it does.
Best way to deal with it? What’s the modern solution here
Thanks but it’s too late. Here it’s all over unfortunately. I’m just doing my best to mitigate the risks. Anything more substantial?
“better late than never”
if it already got force-deployed, start noting risks and finding the problem areas you can identify post-hoc, and speaking with people to raise alert level about it
probably a lot of people are going to be in the same position as you, and writing about the process you go through and whatever you find may end up useful to others
on a practical note (if you don’t know how to do this type of assessment) a couple of sittings with debug logging enabled on the various api implementations, using data access monitors (whether file or database), inspecting actual api calls made (possibly by making things go through logging proxies as needed), etc will all likely provide a lot of useful info, but it’ll depend on whether you can access those things in the first place
if you can’t do those, closely track publications of issues for all the platforms your employer may have used/rolled out, and act rapidly when shit inevitably happens - same as security response
How’s it at your place? What’s your experience been with this whole thing
whenever any of this dogshit comes up, I have immediately put my foot down and said no. occasionally I have also provided reasoning, where it may have been necessary/useful
(it’s easy to do this because making these calls is within my role, and I track the dodgy parts of shit more than anyone else in the company)
Hm, that’s good to have such authority on the matter. What’s your position?
I’m struggling with people who don’t fully understand what this is all about the most.
my position is “the hell with all this clown-ass bullshit”
Limit access on both sides (user and cloud) as far as you can, train your users if possible. Prepare for the fire, limit liability.