{"id":169639,"date":"2026-06-03T16:13:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T15:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/2026\/06\/03\/veeam-research-finds-ais-promise-is-colliding-with-a-data-and-ai-trust-gap\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T16:13:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T15:13:24","slug":"veeam-research-finds-ais-promise-is-colliding-with-a-data-and-ai-trust-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/2026\/06\/03\/veeam-research-finds-ais-promise-is-colliding-with-a-data-and-ai-trust-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"Veeam research finds AI\u2019s promise is colliding with a data and AI trust gap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

New global C-level study finds 48% of executives say trusted, secure data could unlock 25%-plus revenue growth, yet only 7% of organisations are truly AI-ready.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veeam Software, the Data and AI Trust Company, has unveiled new global research at VeeamON London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new Data and AI Trust Gap<\/em> report from Veeam exposes a stark and widening gap at the heart of enterprise AI. While 88% of organisations are already using or piloting AI agents, only 7% qualify as truly AI-ready and 95% say data challenges have already slowed their AI progress. As Agentic AI moves from pilots into production, organisations face an urgent challenge: ensuring that the data powering those systems is visible, governed, secure and resilient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research, based on a global survey of 600 senior executives across financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and technology, reveals that AI adoption is scaling dramatically faster than the governance structures designed to manage it. Despite strong executive investment and intent, the ability to control, monitor and recover from AI failures is critically underdeveloped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key findings show AI is scaling faster than control:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Only 7% of organisations are truly AI-ready.
\u2022 88% are already using or piloting AI agents.
\u2022 Only 28% are confident they can detect AI systems operating outside approved parameters.
\u2022 95% say data challenges have already slowed AI progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The figures show a clear trust gap between AI adoption and the governance, visibility and control required to support it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anand Eswaran, CEO, Veeam, said: \u201cMost organisations don\u2019t have an AI adoption problem; they have an AI trust problem. The first phase of AI was defined by infrastructure investment, experimentation, and acceleration. The next phase will be defined by trust. With the widespread adoption of autonomous AI agents operating at machine speed, the question transitions from whether you can use AI, to whether you can ensure all your data is secure, governed, compliant and resilient. And should something go wrong, can you recover with precision? That\u2019s how you accelerate safe AI at scale without accelerating reputational and operational risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Executive confidence masks an operational reality gap<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research uncovers a significant perception gap between the boardroom and the operational teams responsible for delivering AI outcomes. Progress frequently stalls between intent and execution: governance exists inconsistently, data is managed reactively and ownership is assigned but fragmented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 65% of CEOs believe they have a full AI inventory, compared with just 48% of technical leaders.
\u2022 52% of CEOs believe they actively lead on data, but only 41% of CISOs and 38% of CIOs agree.
\u2022 48% of CEOs believe trusted, secure and compliant data could unlock more than 25% revenue growth.
\u2022 83% of CEOs feel pressure to accelerate their AI and data capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This combination of rapid AI adoption, coupled with incomplete visibility and unclear accountability, creates the conditions for failures that are difficult to detect, explain and contain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When AI fails, it won\u2019t look like downtime<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As AI systems become more autonomous, the nature of failure is shifting. Risk is moving away from traditional system outages toward data-level failures that are harder to detect, explain and contain. The research warns that machine-speed mistakes can outpace detection, forcing resilience to evolve from broad recovery to precision \u2013 restoring only what is impacted, rather than rewinding entire environments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among organisations running AI today, only a minority could identify within minutes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Which systems it accessed (29%).
\u2022 What actions it took (25%).
\u2022 What decisions it influenced (24%).
\u2022 Which data the system used (22%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only 40% of leaders are very confident they can isolate and precisely reverse an Agentic AI failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside-out, outside-in: governance is converging on data<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The governance challenge is converging on data from two directions: internal demand and external scrutiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside organisations, unauthorised AI use is now mainstream:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 95% report unauthorised AI use within their organisation and 93% view it as a significant risk.
\u2022 Yet only 25% offer approved alternatives, meaning most are trying to suppress demand rather than govern it effectively.
\u2022 44% say increased cyber-risk is the top \u2018Shadow AI\u2019 risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, regulatory pressure outside the organisation is intensifying. Sixty-one percent of organisations say the EU AI Act has already influenced AI investment strategies in the last 12 months, while 47% cite maintaining audit trails for AI decisions as their biggest compliance concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trust requires ownership, not shared ambiguity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new research shows that the core barriers to progress are fragmented ownership and misaligned operating disciplines, with data, AI and governance responsibilities often spread across teams in ways that dilute accountability and slow execution. When \u201ceveryone owns it\u201d, no one can decisively set policy, enforce controls or prove outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where ownership is clearly defined, outcomes improve significantly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 24% more likely to detect rogue AI behaviour in organisations where CISOs own AI agent risk.
\u2022 47% less likely to detect rogue AI behaviour in organisations relying on shared ownership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data doesn\u2019t need another champion \u2013 it needs accountable leadership strong enough to align governance, security, privacy, compliance and resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trust is becoming the operating foundation for enterprise AI<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A clear divide is emerging between organisations that can operationalise trust and those that cannot. Organisations that successfully align ambition, visibility and governance significantly outperform their peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among organisations classified as fully AI-ready, 97% report measurable business benefits from data and AI investments, compared with 48% overall, demonstrating the value of operationalising trust at enterprise scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veeam: Building the Data and AI Trust Layer<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veeam is addressing this challenge by combining data resilience, security and governance to help organisations see what data AI uses, govern how it\u2019s accessed by humans and agents and recover clean, trusted data with precision when incidents occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe findings here leave no room for doubt. When 95% of executives say data challenges are already slowing their AI progress, the bottleneck isn\u2019t the model \u2013 it\u2019s trusted, governed, recoverable data,\u201d added Eswaran. \u201cVeeam is building the Data and AI Trust layer to give enterprises the visibility, control and precision recovery needed to scale AI safely and deliver real business value.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New global C-level study finds 48% of executives say trusted, secure data could unlock 25%-plus revenue growth, yet only 7% of organisations are truly AI-ready. Veeam Software, the Data and AI Trust Company, has unveiled new global research at VeeamON London. The new Data and AI Trust Gap report from Veeam exposes a stark and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":169640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21185,93],"tags":[22048,24872,25893,577,69,444,8672,20475,5594],"class_list":["post-169639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-surveys","category-top-stories","tag-agentic-ai","tag-ai-trust","tag-anand-eswaran","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-data","tag-data-governance","tag-data-resilience","tag-enterprise-ai","tag-veeam-software"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}