OpenAI’s move to implement a Lockdown Mode that tries to limit data exfiltration by shutting down external capabilities is being seen as making the best out of a bad situation. But Lockdown Mode doesn’t block exfiltration as much as it slightly reduces it, and the reality of enterprises using multiple AI vendors for their agentic models further complicates an already dicey governance strategy.
When activated within OpenAI products’ settings, Lockdown Mode limits web browsing to cached content, limits image support, disables Deep Research and Agent Mode, denies users the ability to approve Canvas-generated code to access the network, and prevents ChatGPT from downloading files for data analys...