Why organizations are falling into an AI Security Illusion

Organizations trust AI to improve security, but breaches reveal a dangerous confidence gap

by · TechRadar

Opinion By Danielle Kinsella Published 12 August 2026

(Image credit: Getty Images)

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Many organizations believe they are successfully leveraging AI tools to strengthen their security posture.

Investment is rising, AI is being embedded across multiple workloads and workflows, and governance frameworks continue to expand, giving the impression on the surface that progress is being made.

Danielle Kinsella

EMEA director at Gigamon.

But beneath this AI adoption lies an unseen problem: a growing gap between what organizations believe about their infrastructure security, and what they can actually evidence.

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Confidence is rising, but so are breaches

According to a global 2026 Hybrid Cloud Security Survey, which gathered the views of more than 1,000 Security and IT leaders, 93 percent have invested in new security technologies, yet despite this, breach rates have hit their highest point. Sixty-five per cent of organizations experienced a data breach in the past 12 months, an 18 percent rise year on year, and a near 40 percent rise over three years.

These worrying statistics are starting to ring alarm bells, highlighting that within organizations we are starting to see an ‘illusion of security’ creeping in. Organizations are investing heavily in security tools, yet still seem to lack clear visibility into the outcomes of their investments. In other words, leaving security to be measured by what has been implemented, rather than what can actually be verified.

A perfect storm of conditions has brought us to this point: AI adoption has scaled faster than governance and security teams can keep pace with, and hybrid cloud has added another dimension of complexity that few organizations have fully reckoned with.

AI is now embedded across enterprise environments, accelerating not just how organizations operate, but how risk moves through them. As adoption has outpaced oversight, the consequences are starting to surface, with nearly half of organizations surveyed reporting a rise in AI-related insider threats, including data leaks, and unsanctioned use (shadow AI). Perhaps surprisingly confidence hasn't reduced. Many organizations continue to classify their AI security posture as "defined" or "integrated," despite evidence portraying a radically different story.

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