AI Adoption Surges as Organizations Lose Visibility and Face Growing Security Risks, AvePoint Report Finds Jersey City, N.J. – June 29, 2026 – A new report from AvePoint reveals that AI adoption has rapidly scaled into daily enterprise operations, but organizations are struggling with visibility, governance, and security risks as unsanctioned tool usage surges. The State of AI Report: Scaling Trust, Control, and Readiness in the Agentic Era, conducted in partnership with Osterman Research, surveyed 750 enterprise leaders across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC responsible for data security, AI programs, or information management. Key findings highlight a widening governance gap, with nearly half (46.9%) of global employees using AI agents weekly or daily up from 2025 and work processes incorporating AI agents expected to double within the next year. Organizations anticipate AI agents will replace over 25% of human work in the next 12 months and nearly half within five years. However, cost displacement, not headcount reduction, drives adoption, with ROI measured by reduced manual effort and reallocated human capacity. Despite rapid deployment, visibility and control lag behind. 21.1% of organizations cannot track unsanctioned AI agent usage, a higher blind spot than the 17.6% lacking visibility into unsanctioned generative AI tools. Top concerns include AI agents making incorrect judgments or bypassing human oversight, while cybersecurity though the most common use case remains high-risk without proper governance. Confidence in security does not match reality. 82.7% of respondents claim high confidence in preventing unauthorized AI data access, yet 72% of the "very confident" and 62% of the "extremely confident" groups reported AI-related breaches in the past year. Security incidents have risen sharply, with 89.5% of organizations experiencing at least one generative AI-related breach in 2026 (up from 75.1% in 2025) and 88.4% facing AI agent breaches. These gaps have delayed AI deployments for 86.9% of organizations by an average of six months due to data security concerns. AI-generated data is also reshaping enterprise storage. 35.5% of enterprise data is now AI-generated, expected to reach 42.1% within a year, while 84.1% of organizations manage at least 1 petabyte of data. The combination of aging data (78.1% report at least half is over five years old) and AI-generated content risks compounding governance failures at scale. To address these challenges, organizations are prioritizing investments in data security for AI training (79.5%) and third-party governance tools, including AI Agent Management Platforms (AMPs). 95.5% have taken action to mitigate AI agent security risks, reducing inaction from 8.3% in 2025 to 2.5% in 2026. AvePoint’s CEO, Dr. Tianyi Jiang, emphasized that AI’s constraint is no longer model capability but trust visibility, enforceable governance, and control. Without these foundations, rapid deployment increases exposure. The report concludes that scalable AI adoption depends on a "trust layer" operational frameworks ensuring auditable, correctable outcomes. The full report is available from AvePoint.