Security Teams Have the Tools. Very Few Can Follow the Data.
Based on a survey of 1,064 cybersecurity practitioners at enterprises with 2,500 or more employees, this report reveals where visibility, enforcement, and evidence break as sensitive data moves across cloud, SaaS, private applications, endpoints, and AI workflows. The independent research was conducted by Cybersecurity Insiders with support from Netskope.
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58%
operate eleven or more separate data security tools
7%
are confident sensitive data is not flowing uncontrolled into AI
27%
take weeks to reconstruct a sensitive-data path
Most security teams know where sensitive data is stored. Very few know where it goes, or what it becomes. As data moves across more environments, changes form, and enters AI workflows, security teams lose the context needed to enforce policy, investigate exposure, and prove what happened. Organizations have built data security coverage tool by tool, yet only 7% describe their stack as completely unified. In fragmented environments, analysts rebuild data paths by hand, enforcement varies by channel, and evidence remains scattered when legal, privacy, and regulatory teams need it.
Inside the report:
- Visibility: where tracking breaks as data crosses environments — only 7% can follow sensitive data moving between applications in real time
- Enforcement: why controls hold for files but miss AI — 53% govern file uploads, only 20% govern prompt and text submissions into AI tools
- AI governance: the policy-to-enforcement gap — 67% maintain an AI policy, just 8% enforce consistently in AI environments
- Evidence: what happens when regulators ask — only 12% can quickly produce a comprehensive chain of custody
- The path forward: a data security maturity matrix showing where progress is blocked, and the five moves that close the gap
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