Free service guide · PDF

The Secure AI Adoption Guide for Small Businesses

How to choose, prepare for and pilot AI tools and agents without exposing your data.

A simple scoring method for choosing your first AI use cases
The data-exposure risks explained, with the fix for each
A one-page AI acceptable use policy outline you can adapt
A pilot plan, an autonomy ladder for agents, a checklist and a 90-day roadmap

11 pages23-item checklist30/60/90-day plan

Cover of The Secure AI Adoption Guide for Small Businesses

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Cover and two sample pages of The Secure AI Adoption Guide for Small Businesses, a free 11-page PDF guide from Alpiba with a 23-point checklist — A look inside: the cover and two pages from the 11-page PDF.

What's inside

Inside the guide.

Most small businesses don't need an AI strategy deck. They need to know which tasks are worth automating, what has to be fixed before an assistant can see their files and how to tell whether a pilot actually worked. This guide covers those decisions in the order you'll face them.

Work through it with whoever owns IT and one or two people who do the work you want to automate. The closing checklist and 90-day plan make it a project with owners and dates, and the questions help you hold any vendor or provider to the same standard. Alpiba's engineers use the same approach, but everything here works without us.

Choose the right first use cases
Close the data exposure gaps first
Write a one-page AI acceptable use policy
Run a pilot you can measure
Guardrails for AI agents
The checklist23 items in 5 groups
Questions to ask any IT provider10 questions
Your 30/60/90-day plan3 phases, step by step
Plain-English glossary8 terms

Read Part 1 free

The opening chapter of the guide, in full. The rest of the guide, the checklist and the 90-day plan are in the PDF.

Choose the right first use cases

Score each idea from 1 to 3 on four questions, with 2 sitting in between. Ideas with high frequency, low sensitivity, easy checking and easy reversal make the best first pilots.

Use case scoring
Question	Score 1	Score 3
How often does the task happen?	A few times a month	Many times a day
How sensitive is the data involved?	Client, patient or financial records	Internal or public information
How easy is it to check the result?	Errors are subtle	Errors are obvious at a glance
How easy is it to undo a mistake?	Mistakes reach clients or move money	A draft can simply be discarded

Inbox triage, meeting summaries and first drafts from templates usually score well. Anything that decides about people, sends binding documents or moves money scores poorly and should stay with humans, at least for now. Write down why each shortlisted idea scored the way it did; the reasoning is useful when you review the pilot.

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A preview

A sample from the guide.

Here's the first checklist group and a few of the questions. The full guide has all 23 checklist items, 10 questions and the 90-day plan.

Governance

An owner for AI adoption is named
A one-page AI acceptable use policy is published and staff have been trained on it
Approved AI tools are listed and everyone uses company accounts
There is a simple way to request a new AI tool
Mistakes and data leaks involving AI have a clear reporting path

Questions to ask any IT provider

1What will you check about our permissions before turning on an AI assistant?
2How will you find out which AI tools our staff already use?
3Where are our prompts, outputs and uploaded files stored, for how long, and are they used to train models?
4Which actions will require human approval, and who will approve them?

+ 6 more questions in the full guide

Get the full guide Related: Secure AI & Automation

Secure AI & Automation at a glance. Included: AI readiness review, Permission cleanup, Copilot & Gemini rollout planning, AI usage policy, Workflow automation design and Monitoring & review. How it works: Discovery & Analysis, Solution Design, Implement and Protect & Optimize. — Secure AI & Automation at a glance: what is included and how we roll it out.

Your first 30 days

Where to start this month.

The guide's 30/60/90-day plan begins with these steps. Assign an owner to each and review progress every two weeks.

1Name an owner and list the AI tools staff already use
2Publish a one-page AI acceptable use policy and train staff on it
3Map where sensitive data lives and find content shared too widely
4Shortlist use cases with the scoring table

Key terms in plain English

Agentic AI: AI that plans and takes multi-step actions toward a goal, such as triaging requests or updating records, using the tools and permissions it is given.
Copilot or assistant: AI built into everyday apps, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot or Gemini in Google Workspace, that works with the files and messages a user can access.
Prompt: The instruction or question given to an AI tool, including any text or files attached to it.
Prompt injection: Hidden instructions in content an AI reads, such as an email or web page, designed to make it act against your interests.
Shadow AI: AI tools used for work without the company's knowledge or approval, often through personal accounts.
Oversharing: Access to files or sites that is wider than needed, such as content open to the whole company or to anyone with a link.
Human in the loop: A design in which a person reviews or approves an AI's output or action before it takes effect.
Hallucination: A confident, plausible-sounding AI answer that is wrong or made up.