Your Data Has Left the Chat
How Organizations Lose Control of Their Most Valuable Asset.
It started on the Slack group.
A casual Friday afternoon, the kind where productivity is already on its way to happy hour. The team chat, normally buzzing with task updates and passive-aggressive “noted” messages, was unusually quiet. That’s when Daniel from Sales dropped it.
“VIP_Customer_List_FINAL_v3_UPDATED2.xlsx”
No subject. No password. No explanation. Not even a “pls see attached.”
Just… dropped.
At first, nobody reacted. But curiosity is a powerful thing. Within minutes, someone clicked. Then someone else forwarded it to their Gmail for “easy access.” Another person opened it on their tablet, screenshot a portion, and sent it to their partner with the caption “Hold this for me”. By the time the office closed for the weekend, the spreadsheet had visited, Four personal devices, two laptops and one cloud folder.
And by Monday morning?
The file had made its way to a cousin’s phone in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. No one knew how. No one asked. But someone had used it to draft a sample marketing email, complete with names, phone numbers, and “loyalty status.”
Meanwhile, ICT was investigating mysterious spoof emails being sent to clients.
That’s when it hit them: The data had left the chat.
Quietly. Elegantly. Like a ghost at a dinner party. No alarms. No “Are you sure you want to share this externally?” pop-up. Just a gentle click, a few screen taps, and the privacy of 800 customers had walked out the back door wearing flip-flops.
Welcome to the Great Data Escape
You’d think by 2025 we’d have it all figured out. Data governance. Compliance. Encryption. Firewalls that actually fire. But no! Many companies still treat sensitive data like free Wi-Fi in a lobby: easy to connect to, Impossible to monitor.
The irony? Companies will spend a fortune on branding consultants and cybersecurity webinars, only to save their customer data in a file named “ClientList(1).xls” and store it on Brenda’s desktop, right next to Candy Crush and an outdated version of Chrome.
Data, in many offices, has no curfew. It roams. It freelances. It gets forwarded, downloaded, renamed, zipped, unzipped, shared again, and finally ends up in someone’s Google Drive titled “Office Stuff.”
Worse still, many employees don't know what qualifies as sensitive. They’ll guard their Netflix password like it's national security, but casually email a list of vendors, invoices, or customer addresses without a second thought. And when breaches happen, the response is always the same:
“But it was just an Excel file.”
“We only sent it to the internal group.”
“Wait... are you saying that file had live links?”
“I thought GDPR was for Europe only?” (Spoiler alert: it’s not.)
The truth is, your data doesn’t need to be hacked. It just needs to be mishandled. And most of the time, it’s not the malicious actors, it’s Brenda from Procurement trying to be helpful, sending out Q2 reports via her personal Gmail.
So yes, welcome to the Great Data Escape: Where your information travels faster than your official press release. Where your privacy policy exists just because. And where, somehow, your customer data knows more countries than your CEO’s passport.
Red Flags That Your Data Is Moonwalking Out the Door
You may think your data is safe. Locked up. Secured. But if any of the following sound familiar… Congratulations: your data is already halfway to Mauritius with a fake passport and a USB stick full of secrets.
You use unsecured email to send customer databases. You wouldn't mail cash in an envelope, right? So why send a spreadsheet of 3,000 customer details via email, cc'ing the intern who left two months ago? And it’s always the version labeled “FINAL” that gets leaked… even though five more versions followed.
“Everyone” has edit access on the Drive. From the CEO to the janitor. Even “Intern_2022@gmail.com” still has full permissions. One wrong click and poof, your annual report is now called “butterfly_dance_party.xls” and someone replaced your charts with GIFs of dancing frogs. Democracy is great…For nations. Not for your data.
You’ve never run a penetration test (but have definitely run a WhatsApp poll). You’ve asked your team, “Should we do lunch or brunch?” But you’ve never once asked, “Can someone break into our systems if they try?”
Staff say things like “Just WhatsApp it to me” or “I’ll keep a copy on my USB.” Because nothing screams “secure data transfer” like forwarding a PDF through your partner’s WhatsApp chat with a “Hold this for me” caption
Your backup strategy is “hoping God protects us.” Translation: no regular backups, no versioning, and if the server dies, you light a candle and pray. Look, faith is powerful. But cloud redundancy is holier.
Introducing the “CHAT” Framework for Data Governance
The CHAT Framework is your anti-leak starter pack, a simple 4-part governance tool to help teams keep data in the chat (and out of the tabloids).
Each letter is a gate. Miss one? Your data moonwalks.
Most data governance strategies are written like medical insurance plans: Confusing, ignored, and only opened when something is bleeding. That’s where CHAT comes in. It’s not just an acronym; it’s an organisational mindset:
C- Control Access: Not everyone needs the keys to the vault. Data exposure happens not only because people are malicious, but because they’re over-permissioned.
H- Harden the Tools: Your tools should work for security, not around it. Harden the infrastructure. Make breaches difficult. Make laziness inconvenient.
A- Audit Regularly: If it’s not monitored, it’s being misused. Period! Most data leaks work quietly. They don’t arrive with red flashing lights; they appear as quiet oversights.
T- Train Like You Mean It: People don’t follow rules they don’t understand or remember. People are not stupid. They’re just busy. And security PDFs is boring. If you want good behavior, make it stick through repetition.
If you remember nothing else, remember this: Don’t just chat. CHAT.
If You Don’t Manage Your Data, It Will Manage You
While I wait for my twice-microwaved jollof rice to warm up once again, it dawned on me that leaky data erodes trust. It puts you on blog posts you didn’t authorize. It ruins product launches, investor meetings, and sometimes… friendships.
But with a bit of discipline and the CHAT framework, you can build an organization where your data stays where it belongs: secure, encrypted, and never making surprise appearances in old school group chats.
Think your organization is safe? Try this: Audit your last 10 shared files. If you find one marked “Confidential” that’s also in your downloads folder next to “SINNERS_HD_Trailer.mp4”... Congratulations.
Your data has officially left the chat.
Ask God for forgiveness.
Or better, implement CHAT.
