Employee Fired After Uploading Corporate Documents to DeepSeek: How Data Security Works in AI Services
A Moscow engineering company dismissed a top manager after she uploaded internal documents to the public DeepSeek service, with the court ruling it a breach of trade secrets. The case highlights a sharp rise in corporate data being sent to public AI models, with one study showing a 30-fold increase in 2025 compared to the previous year. Technical director Yaroslav Shmulyov of integrator R77 AI explains the full processing pipeline, from file ingestion and text extraction to embedding generation and potential use in training. Sensitive data can persist in multiple forms including original files, logs, third-party infrastructure, and model parameters even after deletion requests. Major incidents at Samsung and a U.S. cybersecurity agency demonstrate that even well-resourced organizations struggle with uncontrolled AI usage. Companies are increasingly turning to local and hybrid models to regain control over confidential information while regulators and internal policies lag behind adoption.
HabrAug 7, 2026Translated from Russian