- Thales examined more than 3,000 IT experts on generative AI
- The researchers found plenty of concern for security
- In spite of the concerns, the companies accelerate the adoption
Despite having seen it as an important innovation driver, companies are overwhelmingly concerned about the security threats of artificial intelligence (AI). This is according to 2025 Thales Data Threat Report, the company’s annual report on the latest data security threats, trends and new topics.
Based on a study of more than 3,100 IT and security professionals in 20 countries and across 15 industries, the Thales report found that almost 70% of organizations consider the rapid development of AI as their greatest security risk. Generative AI that can create text and images from simple text prompts is a particular concern.
Drilling deeper into these ideas, problems with integrity and reliability appear as major challenges. Nearly two -thirds (64%) of respondents care about AI’s lack of integrity, while 57% cited ‘credibility’ as a major challenge. Since various Genai features such as training, inference or content generation depend on user-developed data, respondents expressed their concern about increasing exposure to data security risks.
Cisa added the deficiencies to Kev
Regardless of these concerns, organizations are still accelerating their AI resolution, the report further explains, which suggests this puts them at unnecessary risk. In fact, one -third of companies are actively integrating Genai into operations despite not ensuring the full security of their system. Expenses for Genai have become one of the most important priorities for organizations, only in second place to Cloud Security.
“The rapidly evolving Genai landscape is urgent companies to move rapidly, sometimes at the expense of caution when driving to stay in front of the adoption curve,” said Eric Hanselman, chief analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research. “Many companies implement Genai faster than they can fully understand their application architectures, composed of the rapid spread of Saa’s tools that embed the Genai capacities, adding layers of complexity and risk.”
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of professionals reported investing in AI-specific security tools with either new or existing budgets, Thales’ report concluded.