Your Data, Your AI, Not Public (with @Paul Barney)
Most boards want AI. Few want their client files indexed on the open web. If you run a firm that handles confidential documents, here is how you use AI without leaking anything that matters.
Why this matters if you run a serious business
Every week a new story breaks. Sensitive client data uploaded to ChatGPT by mistake. A law firm partner who fed a merger document into an open model. A wealth manager who copied portfolio notes into a public AI chat and forgot the conversation history lives on a server somewhere in California.
The damage is quiet at first. Then a regulator asks questions. A client spots their information in the wrong place. Trust evaporates.
You protect sensitive data without losing AI capability
You get clear answers from your own files without uploading sensitive data to the public internet. Your team asks real questions about business intelligence, risk or customer trends and the AI reads only what you already own. Nobody outside your four walls sees a single line.
You build institutional memory, not prompt history
You build a private knowledge layer that grows more valuable each quarter, not a trail of prompts scattered across ChatGPT. Every indexed document, every query, every answer stays inside your secure perimeter. Compliance officers sleep better. Clients stay longer.
You pass audits without panic
Compliance stays clean because nothing leaves the secure perimeter you control. When an auditor arrives, you can show exactly where your data lives, who touched it and how the AI accessed it. No surprises, no apologies.
You cut decision time from days to minutes
Decisions get faster because the right document surfaces in seconds, not days of digging through archives. A director asks about a clause in a 2019 contract. The system returns the answer before lunch. Legal review that used to take three days now takes thirty minutes.
Key ideas in this video
Keep AI inside a secure space
Let tools like Microsoft Copilot or enterprise ChatGPT read only your indexed files, never the open web. Set permissions so the model cannot reach beyond your document library. Test it with dummy data first, then roll it out to one department, then scale across the firm.
Ask real questions and get clear answers
Query your own data for business intelligence, risk patterns or next best customer without exposing anything. The AI scans your CRM, your contracts, your board minutes and tells you what you need to know. It does not remember. It does not share. It does not train on your secrets.
Do not upload to the open web
Once it floats into the ether, you lose control. A document uploaded to a free AI service might end up in a training set. A client name typed into a public chatbot might surface in someone else’s autocomplete suggestion six months later. Keep it private, index it, then query it safely.
Digitise archives properly
Convert paper records and legacy files into searchable, secure formats before you connect AI. Old contracts in a basement filing cabinet are worthless to an AI. Scan them, OCR them, tag them, lock them down. Then point the AI at the digital vault and let it work.
Credit the spark
Paul Barney has spent years helping firms digitise archives and deploy enterprise AI without leaking a byte. His systems turn dusty paper into queryable knowledge, and they do it without sending anything to a public cloud. If you handle documents that matter, his approach is the one to study.
The quiet path into corporate clients
Most consultants shout about AI transformation. They promise moonshots and disruption and radical change. Boards nod politely, then do nothing because the risk feels too high.
We prefer quiet systems that protect reputation first, then deliver results. A private AI layer that answers questions without exposing data. A document archive that turns thirty years of institutional memory into a search bar. A compliance process that satisfies regulators and builds client trust at the same time.
This is how you sell into firms that run £5M to £20M operations. You do not pitch revolution. You show them a calm, controlled way to use the technology everyone is talking about without gambling their reputation on a public beta.
If you want a private AI layer running behind the scenes, book a Reputation Review with LPV.Agency. We will map your documents, your compliance requirements and your team’s actual questions, then build a system that works without leaking.
