Shadow AI discovery
Find the AI your people adopted without review: local agents and MCP servers, AI sites and personal accounts, and AI apps holding OAuth grants on your tenant.
Why one vantage point misses most of it
Shadow AI lives in three places. Browser-only and network-only tools see the AI sites people visit, but not the agents, MCP servers, skills, plugins and plaintext secrets on the laptop, which never cross the network as anything recognisable. Endpoint tools see the laptop, but not the third-party AI app an employee granted Drive or repository access to, which never touches a device at all. See shadow AI detection techniques for how each method compares.
Three collectors, one inventory
- Endpoint Sensor: AI agents, MCP servers, IDE and browser extensions, plugins, skills, hooks, CLIs, local LLM runtimes and plaintext secrets, on Windows, macOS and Linux.
- Browser Sensor: the AI web services people use in managed Chrome and Edge, the accounts signed into them (corporate, personal or another company's tenant), and secrets or personal data pasted, typed or uploaded into them.
- Cloud connectors: read-only connections to Google Workspace, GitHub, Microsoft Entra, Okta and AI platforms such as Claude Enterprise, OpenAI Platform and Cursor, finding AI applications holding OAuth grants and the posture of the AI your company runs.
From discovery to decision
Each tool, site and extension lands against an allowlist. Anything not approved raises a finding, and the console suggests what the fleet already uses so approving the sanctioned set takes minutes. Personal accounts on AI sites, unapproved AI sites, secrets pasted into a chat window and risky browser extensions each have their own policy, and the Browser Sensor can redact or block on the way in.
What Anomity does not do
- It is not a network proxy or an AI gateway, and it does not read prompts, responses or source code. It reads configuration and metadata.
- Blocking happens at an agent's own pre-execution hook, so it applies to agents that expose one. Agents without a hook interface are discovered and evaluated against policy, but their tool calls are not intercepted.
- The Browser Sensor covers managed Chrome and Edge. AI used in an unmanaged browser is outside its view.
- It complements EDR/XDR, DLP, CASB and your AI gateway rather than replacing them.
Related reading
AI agents are the new shadow IT, shadow AI adoption by department, what employees paste into AI tools and the AI discovery buyer's guide.
Frequently asked questions
How can a CISO detect shadow AI and local coding agents?
Combine an endpoint sensor that reads AI tool configs on managed devices, a browser sensor for AI web services and accounts, and cloud connectors for OAuth grants. Network logs alone miss local agents and MCP servers, which is why Anomity collects from all three.
Can Anomity tell a personal AI account from a corporate one?
Yes. The Browser Sensor classifies the account signed into each AI site as corporate, personal or another company's tenant, and a policy can raise a finding for personal accounts.
Does shadow AI discovery require a network proxy?
No. Anomity does not route or decrypt traffic. It reads configuration on the endpoint, activity in the managed browser and grants through read-only cloud APIs.
See it on your own fleet. The Endpoint Sensor deploys through the MDM you already run, and the first findings typically arrive within 30 minutes.
