Corporate Concerns Over AI Security and Privacy Intensify

Two recent reports highlight the growing concerns businesses have about generative artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in terms of security, privacy, and trust. As companies face increasing pressure to integrate AI into their operations, they are grappling with the reliability and auditability of these technologies.

According to KPMG's latest report, 67% of business leaders plan to spend money on cyber and data security protections for their AI models. Fifty-two percent cited risk and compliance as a budgetary priority. These findings underscore the growing importance of AI security in corporate strategies.

In KPMG’s Q2 2025 report, 69% of leaders expressed concerns about AI data privacy, a significant increase from 43% in Q4 2024. Regulatory concerns also grew, from 42% to 55%. Andrew Lohn, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, noted that this increased spending is a positive sign that companies are serious about using AI, not just experimenting with it.

Thales’ annual data threat report, based on a survey of 3,200 IT and security professionals in 20 countries and 15 industries, echoed similar trends. The top four risks related to generative AI included the rapid transformation of the ecosystem (69%), data integrity issues (64%), trust (57%), and confidentiality (45%).

AI security ranked high on the list of respondents’ biggest security-related expenses. One in 10 respondents said it was their largest expense, 13% ranked it second, and 7% ranked it third. Overall, AI security was the second-highest security expense for organizations.

Despite the high level of concern, only 10% of respondents ranked AI security as their top expense, suggesting a misalignment in how organizations purchase and maintain AI systems. Nick Reese, co-founder and COO of the AI company Frontier Foundry, emphasized that to realize the full value of AI investments, companies need to address the lack of trust and confidence through rigorous testing.

Thales also found that 73% of respondents are investing in AI-specific security tools, either with new or existing budgets. More than two-thirds of respondents are purchasing these tools from their cloud vendors, while three in five are buying them from security vendors, and about half from new vendors.

KPMG's report also revealed evolving comfort levels with agentic AI, which uses autonomous systems to perform complex tasks. In Q4 2025, 63% of respondents prioritized deploying AI agents from trusted tech providers, down to 55% in Q2 2025. Meanwhile, 45% of respondents in Q2 said they were not allowing AI agents access to sensitive data without human oversight, down from 52% in Q4 2024. On the other hand, the proportion of respondents who were not yet comfortable fully turning tasks over to AI agents increased from 28% to 45%.

These findings highlight the ongoing challenges and opportunities in the AI landscape, as businesses continue to navigate the complex interplay between innovation and security.