As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the central engine of enterprise productivity, security leaders are finally getting the green light—and the budget—to secure it with the RFP Guide. However, many organizations recognize the need for “AI Governance” but lack clarity on exactly what they are looking for.
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Without a structured evaluation method for the growing market of AI Usage Control (AUC) solutions, teams risk investing in outdated tools that were never designed for the era of autonomous workflows and hidden browser extensions.
A new RFP Guide for Evaluating AI Usage Control Solutions and AI Governance has been released to address this issue. It serves as a technical framework to help security architects and CISOs move from vague “AI security” goals to specific, measurable project criteria.
Conventional wisdom suggests that to secure AI, organizations must catalog every application their employees use. This approach is ineffective. The RFP Guide advocates a shift in perspective: AI security is not merely an “application”; it is fundamentally an interaction problem.
Focusing on the application means constantly trying to keep up with the numerous new tools that are based on GPT and are released weekly. Conversely, focusing on interaction—such as when a prompt is typed or a file is uploaded—provides control independent of the tool.
Using this RFP to demand “interaction-level inspection”, organizations can avoid becoming obstacles to innovation and instead act as data custodians, regardless of which “Shadow AI” tool is used.
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Many vendors claim that “they do AI security” as a control feature in their CASB or SSE offerings. The RFP Guide helps us discern through this marketing. Most legacy tools depend on network‑level visibility, which fails to capture activity within browser‑side panels or encrypted IDE plugins.
The Guide requires suppliers to answer critical questions:
- Can you detect AI usage in Incognito mode?
- Do you support “AI-native” browsers such as Atlas, Dia, or Comet;
- Can you distinguish between corporate and personal identity in the same session;
This structured approach prevents the “feature-wash” by requiring suppliers to demonstrate their ability to operate at the point of interaction without needing heavy endpoint agents or disruptive network changes.
The RFP Template provides a technical scoring system across eight critical areas to ensure the selected solution is future‑resilient. The goal of this RFP is not merely to gather data but to evaluate it. The Guide includes a response format that requires suppliers to provide detailed explanations instead of simple “Yes/No” answers.
This structured level eliminates guesswork in procurement. Instead of relying on a subjective impression of a supplier, organizations get a comparison based on scoring how suppliers handle real risks such as prompt injections and uncontrolled BYOD environments.
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To gain the advantage, organizations must define their requirements before the market defines them for them. The RFP Guide for Evaluating AI Usage Control Solutions will help standardize assessments, accelerate research, and ultimately ensure the safe adoption of AI that scales with the business.
