Security, governance and pitfalls - how to ensure success with productivity tools in 2026

Microsoft Copilot - the essential companion for professionals

Microsoft Copilot is quickly becoming the essential companion for professionals across every industry. Built into familiar tools like Teams, Outlook, Excel, and Word, Copilot combines the power of artificial intelligence with your day-to-day work to save time, reduce workloads, and boost productivity.

It can help you draft an email in seconds, catch you up with yesterday’s meetings in Teams via automated summaries or help you analyse sales data in Excel without writing a single formula. Powerful stuff! It will also give you intelligent suggestions, automate certain tasks, and bring to light insights when you need them.

This year, we’ve already seen Manchester University striking an incredible deal to give Copilot to its entire student and staff cohort, that’s 65,000 people, so now really is a good time to ask whether this is something you need to get on board with for you and your people.

In this article we will list the key benefits along with a focus on keeping yourself safe and avoiding the pitfalls.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Key Points

Key wins for business:

• Headline statement

  • Copilot increases productivity, aids decision-making and reduces costs

• Simple Individual Wins

  • Everyday Productivity Gains in Outlook, Word, PowerPoint

  • Time savings – use for quick calculations

  • Reducing manual load – handle repetitive tasks, speed up writing and formatting, interpret data and text Use everyday language – no new languages required

• Team Wins

  • Improved collaboration – meeting summaries and actions, meeting recaps, draft meeting agendas, plans and emails

  • Data insights – ask Excel about tables and charts, identify trends and anomalies, Build Power BI reports faster

  • Consistency and Quality – enforce brand and structure guidelines, consistent document styles

  • Fatser employee onboarding – ask copilot about business processes

• Leader and Tech Wins

  • Workflow and Process Automation – approvals, reporting, data entry

  • Knowledge Management – locate information stored in SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Emails

  • Improved Decision Support – summarise business performance, identify risks

  • Custom Copilots – Finance, HR, Sales, Operations

  • Integrate with Enterprise Systems to make your business context available

That is a pretty good summary of how Microsoft 365 Copilot can help you and the benefits it can bring to your business and users.

Save time, See Everything!

It has certainly been of benefit to me personally in the following scenarios (this blog delves into this a little further: Making Life Easier with Chat GPT, Copilot and Gemini):

• Where I have an incredibly lengthy email chain trailing back several months and I need to get an overview of key points discussed, actions agreed and timelines referenced – I can ask Copilot to summarise the entire email chain

• Validating articles and reports I have written by asking Copilot to summarise them, enabling me to see if I have the messaging right

• Automating the production of PowerPoint Presentations by asking Copilot to convert provided text to slides Using Copilot allows me to work faster and more efficiently helping me pick up on things I may have missed or not considered at all.

But; I draw the line at allowing Copilot to create all my text as I think it removes any personality from the results unless you use very explicit prompts to ensure tone, language, humour and style. Some personality and even typos are very human! But it can be used to create a useful first draft, act as a helpful researcher and get to the final result faster.

Responsible Use & Security

As a business owner I do believe that AI should be used responsibly; always check results for sense and accuracy and be aware that it can sometimes hallucinate or make things up.

When it comes to security, compliance, trust and governance it is important to lay down guidelines and polices. Note the following security related points:

• Security, Compliance & Trust

  • Microsoft Copilot respects Microsoft 365 permissions

  • Microsoft Copilot only exposes data a user has access to

  • Data stays within an organisation’s Microsoft cloud environment when using Microsoft Copilot

This is re-assuring, but we need to bear in mind possible pitfalls including:

• Over generous permissions leading to data exposure

• Data leakage through Copilot-generated content

• Prompt Injection and Reprompt Attacks

• Retention and Compliance breaches

• Data Leakage through 3rd Party Apps and APIs

• Inaccuracy, Hallucinations, Biased and Incomplete Insights

• GDPR and data Governance breaches

• Insider Threat Amputation

Over Generous Permissions

Over-generous permissions (or no permissions!) can result in sensitive or confidential data being exposed. So, before encouraging your business users to use Microsoft 365 Copilot within your organisation you might want to carry out a security audit and ensure permissions are as they should be.

• Copilot will trawl through all accessible data that might otherwise not be discovered – think about HR, financial and strategic documents that should be highly protected.

• Users may then inadvertently share summarised documents produced by Microsoft Copilot leading to data leakage or malicious theft.

Prompt Injection and Reprompt

Prompt injection and Reprompt attacks could result in embedded malicious instructions leading to sensitive data being revealed without user awareness. This is where prompts are embedded in documents or in emails that Copilot has access to.

Retention and Compliance

Sensitive data may end up being retained for too long as Copilot history may not be cleared, and summary documents may be saved outside the usual retention-controlled areas.

3rd Party Apps and APIs

If a third-party app or API has weak security and access controls internal data could potentially be exposed externally.

Accuracy of Data

As Copilot only has access to documentation accessible by it there is the potential for misrepresentation, incorrect assumptions, or biased outputs.

GDPR & Data Governance

If you have allowed Copilot to access HR, financial or legal data sources/documents then there is the potential for exposure of protected data.

Summary

In summary Microsoft Copilot can be really helpful, but you should bear in mind the following advice….

• use it sensibly

• use it securely

• sense check what you are doing

• never assume Copilot automated content or tasks are 100% accurate

Success with using Microsoft Copilot comes with knowing what your objectives are, providing context to any questions, making sure requests are not ambiguous, but also making sure you are using it sensibly and securely.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Training

If you would like to maximise your chances of a good Microsoft 365 Copilot experience why not take a look at some of the Microsoft 365 Copilot training courses we have on offer, which will help you pick your way through the dos and don’ts of successful Copilot use.