Locks and Security News: your weekly locks and security industry newsletter
17th June 2026 Issue no. 806

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IT teams embrace AI, but security struggles to keep pace

IT and security teams across the UK and US report rising anxiety over AI‑driven risks as enterprise adoption accelerates, according to new findings from Heimdal’s State of AI Risk Management in 2026 report.

ChatGPT is embedded in 71 per cent of businesses IT infrastructures, with Microsoft Copilot following behind in 68 per cent, but despite the rapid adoption, security teams say their controls are struggling to keep up.

IT teams say these tools are significantly reducing workloads, with nearly three‑quarters reporting that they lose around a quarter of their week to repetitive, low‑value tasks that AI is helping to eliminate.

AI is helping to reduce repetitive work with nearly three-quarters of IT and security teams saying they spend around a quarter of their week on  low-value tasks.

Despite this, only four in ten teams consider their security stack ready for AI‑related threats. Data leakage is a leading concern, especially among teams with full visibility into AI use.

Richard Bovey, Chief for Data at AND Digital, commented: “Boards are pressuring CIOs and CTOs to rollout AI deployments, but the reality is that many organisations lack the governance to do so with the level of control and visibility needed. Especially when it comes to autonomous agents, it’s vital that there are clear audit trails and guardrails to ensure they are operating as intended.”

“For AI to be successful, it requires high-quality data foundations and governance in order to train the AI model effectively. Yet, our research shows that 58 per cent of organisations describe their data as ‘chaos,’ and until that is addressed, businesses risk being surrounded by structural risk.”

Stuart Harvey, CEO of Datactics commented: “AI runs on data and if your data is a mess, your AI doesn’t stand a chance and it’s an uncomfortable reality many businesses security teams are having to face. Executives are racing to adopt AI as they see the benefits to their business operations but they aren’t considering the data chaos that follows. Poor data doesn’t just slow AI down but it actively increases the security risks that come with it and until businesses invest in data quality, readiness and governance, AI will amplify the mess instead of the value.”

17th June 2026