Companies struggle to secure fast-growing workplace AI use

Cybersecurity Dive reports that nearly two-thirds of IT and business leaders say their organizations are adopting agentic artificial intelligence faster than they can fully understand it, while 60% report that AI-driven cyber threats are advancing beyond their security teams' capacity to respond, according to a new report from Sepio Research and Vanta.

The study, based on a survey of 3,500 IT and business leaders in the U.S., Germany, Australia, France, and the UK, found that AI's rapid expansion across workplaces is outpacing the creation of the security controls and governance needed to manage it safely. Additional findings showed that 80% of respondents have launched or intend to deploy AI agents.

"So while AI is clearly viewed as a force multiplier for productivity, organizations haven't yet built the governance structures, guardrails, or incident response playbooks to match the speed of adoption," according to Vanta Senior Director of Governance, Risk, and Compliance Khush Kashyap.

While Fortune 100 firms have expanded disclosures on AI strategy and security risks, a separate EY report in October found that about half of businesses have already faced vulnerabilities in their AI systems.