Dive Brief:
- Companies in the U.S. boosted spending to secure their data in the previous 12 months, according to a Blancco report published Wednesday. The survey, conducted by Coleman Parkes, consulted 2,000 IT and sustainability professionals in February and March.
- More than half of global businesses increased data privacy and protection compliance budgets, with the average organization growing this spending category by 46%. Among U.S. organizations, spend increased 71% year over year.
- The report attributes the spike to several factors, including new regulation in response to AI oversight. "Regulations may lead the charge, but IT and compliance teams also face internal demands for sustainability alignment and smarter asset use," the company said.
Dive Insight:
Enterprise AI efforts pushed up compute costs, with CIOs working to deliver automation at scale. Compliance and data privacy costs rose too, as businesses responded to shifts in AI oversight and worked to mitigate increased cybersecurity risks.
More than 2 in 5 leaders said their companies beefed up cybersecurity practices and reassessed privacy and data security measures due to the increased risks associated with AI adoption, a Gallagher report published in March found.
Almost half of respondents in the Blancco survey credited AI with helping reduce redundant or obsolete data. However, more than 1 in 4 leaders reported the opposite: AI use increased the presence of this type of data in their IT estates.
Leaders often identify data problems as an obstacle to AI deployment at scale. The challenge is compounded as new types of data emerge, said Vipin Gupta, president and CTO at Flipt, speaking during the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium in May.
"We have to rethink how we will label and how we understand the data," Gupta said. "And I think that new thinking is still evolving."
AI might provide an answer to the problem and help organizations sort through existing data more efficiently, Gupta said, as LLMs and other tools enter the market to accelerate data labeling.
