M365 Copilot: Tell Copilot what you need directly from the Copilot button in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

🚨 The Signal: Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint gains direct prompt input and contextual suggestions, making AI assistance more integrated. This increases the risk of sensitive data exposure through user interaction with AI.

The Impact

Microsoft 365 Copilot users are affected, with an increased risk of inadvertent sensitive data exposure due to simplified AI interaction.

• End users: Higher risk of accidentally exposing sensitive data to Copilot through direct prompts.
• Security teams: Increased need for monitoring Copilot usage and data interaction patterns.
• Data owners: Potential for sensitive information to be processed by Copilot without explicit user intent.
• Compliance officers: New challenges in demonstrating adherence to data handling policies with AI integration.

The Action

1. Review and update Microsoft 365 Copilot data governance policies to address new interaction methods.
2. Educate users on responsible prompting and data handling when using Copilot's direct input features.
3. Monitor Microsoft Purview Audit logs for Copilot activities, focusing on content interaction.
4. Leverage Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies to prevent sensitive data from being processed by Copilot inappropriately.
5. Assess existing Information Protection policies to ensure they adequately protect data when Copilot is used directly within applications.

Domain: Agentic-AI · Impact: high · Workload: M365 Apps