AI Adoption Surges While Governance Lags — Report Warns of Growing Shadow Identity Risk

The 2025 State of AI Data Security Report reveals a widening contradiction in enterprise security: AI adoption is nearly universal, yet oversight remains limited. Eighty-three percent of organizations already use AI in daily operations, but only 13 percent say they have strong visibility into how these systems handle sensitive data.

Produced by Cybersecurity Insiders with research support from Cyera Research Labs, the study reflects responses from 921 cybersecurity and IT professionals across industries and organization sizes.

The data shows AI increasingly behaving as an ungoverned identity — a non-human user that reads faster, accesses more, and operates continuously. Yet most organizations still use human-centric identity models that break down at machine speed. As a result, two-thirds have caught AI tools over-accessing sensitive information, and 23 percent admit they have no controls for prompts or outputs.

Autonomous AI agents stand out as the most exposed frontier. Seventy-six percent of respondents say these ...