AvePoint released its annual report, The State of AI in 2025: Go Beyond the Hype to Navigate Trust, Security, and Value, uncovering a significant gap between AI ambition and execution. Despite the push to scale AI initiatives, over 75% of organizations have faced AI-related security breaches, with security challenges causing rollout delays of up to 12 months.
Building on AvePoint’s 2024 report, the State of AI 2025 report tracks the evolution from AI experimentation to enterprise-wide enablement. The findings revealed that despite widespread AI adoption efforts, critical operational gaps persist around data security and quality, with these foundational issues delaying AI rollouts by up to a year for three-quarters of organizations.
According to the report, organizations are experiencing an implementation crisis that’s stalling AI progress:
- AI deployment delays average nearly 6 months, with some organizations facing rollouts stalled up to 12 months due to data quality and security issues.
- Inaccurate AI output (68.7%) and data security concerns (68.5%) top the list of factors for why organizations are slowing the rollout of generative AI assistants.
- 32.5% identify AI hallucinations as the most extreme threat from generative AI assistants.
- 64.2% report employees’ “lack of perceived value” as a major rollout barrier, indicating the difficulties of clearly articulating the value AI creates, and the need for stronger AI enablement programs.
“We’re seeing organizations treat AI governance as a checkbox exercise rather than an operational imperative,” said Dana Simberkoff, Chief Risk, Privacy and Information Security Officer, AvePoint. “The gap between having policies and implementing them effectively is where most security incidents occur. This challenge becomes exponentially more critical as organizations move toward agentic AI systems that can act independently and make decisions without human oversight. Basic security measures cannot keep pace with the complexity and sprawl of AI-generated data, leaving organizations vulnerable unless they evolve their governance models to handle autonomous AI agents.”
The AI Governance Paradox
The report exposed contradictions in organizations’ perception of AI readiness compared to their operational reality. Many companies experience gaps in data governance and information management that are creating significant obstacles to safe AI implementation:
- 90.6% of organizations claim effective information management programs, but only 30.3% have implemented effective data classification systems.
- Among organizations claiming highest information management effectiveness (52.4%), 77.2% still experienced data security incidents, revealing that perceived readiness doesn’t translate to actual protection.
- 43.4% are actively working on AI policies, demonstrating that governance remains iterative rather than a completed initiative.
- Unsanctioned AI usage continues to grow year-over-year, indicating persistent governance gaps in monitoring and enforcement.
The Data Explosion Challenge
Adding urgency to governance concerns, organizations face an unprecedented data management challenge:
- Nearly 20% of organizations expect generative AI to create more than half their data within 12 months.
- Current data growth rates of 23.8% are projected to jump to 31.6% next year.
- 84.6% of organizations use multiple storage platforms, creating data sprawl challenges.
- 70.7% of organizational data is more than five years old, creating significant training data quality issues for AI systems.
“The exponential growth in AI-generated content is fundamentally changing how organizations must approach data security and governance,” said John Peluso, Chief Technology Officer, AvePoint. “We’re seeing enterprises struggle not just with the volume of new data, but with maintaining data lineage and ensuring quality control when AI systems are both consuming and creating information at scale. The organizations succeeding in this environment are those building governance directly into their AI workflows rather than treating it as an afterthought.”
Organizations Respond with Strategic Investments
Despite the challenges, organizations are responding with targeted investments in foundational infrastructure:
- 64.4% are increasing investment in AI governance tools.
- 54.5% are boosting data security tool investments.
- 99.5% are implementing AI literacy interventions, with role-based training proving most effective (79.4% rate as highly impactful).
- 73.9% use both quantitative and qualitative feedback methods to assess AI program effectiveness.
Methodology
The State of AI in 2025: Go Beyond the Hype to Navigate Trust, Security, and Value surveyed 775 respondents spanning 26 countries, targeting C-level through manager-level professionals with AI, information management, or data security responsibilities. Industries represented include financial services, government/public sector, and healthcare. The research was conducted by Osterman Research. The study provides comprehensive insights into the current state of enterprise AI adoption, governance challenges, and emerging best practices.
To read the full AvePoint The State of AI in 2025: Go Beyond the Hype to Navigate Trust, Security, and Value report, visit the website here.
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