Campbell, CA, (September 12, 2023) — The third annual Komprise 2023 State of Unstructured Data Management survey found that IT and business leaders are largely allowing employee use of generative artificial intelligence (genAI), but the majority (66%) are most concerned about the data governance risks from AI in vendor solutions, including privacy, security and the lack of data source transparency.

As the genAI marketplace expands and executives push for departments to leverage new solutions for competitive advantage, the need for an unstructured data governance agenda is strong; IT leaders cannot forsake data integrity or data protection and risk faulty or dangerous outcomes from genAI projects.

To cope, enterprises are restricting the AI tools and/or data that employees are allowed to use, according to the survey. IT leaders are also pursuing a multipronged approach for mitigating risks of unstructured data in AI, which encompass storage, data management and security tools, as well as internal task forces.

The survey, conducted by a third party, gathered inputs from 300 global enterprise storage IT and business decision makers at companies with more than 1,000 employees in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Highlights of the survey:

  • Most organizations (90%) allow employee use of genAI, yet 66% of organizations cited top data governance concerns of preventing security and privacy violations; lack of data-source transparency leading to unethical, biased or inaccurate outputs; and corporate data leakage into the vendor’s AI model.

  • Preparing for AI is the leading data storage priority in 2023, followed by cloud cost optimization.

  • Organizations managing more than 10PB of data grew from 27% to 32% this year, a 19% increase.

  • Nearly three-quarters (73%) are spending 30% or more of IT budget on data storage and protection, measurably higher than 67% in 2022.

“This year’s survey shows that in the blink of an eye, IT leaders are shifting focus to leverage generative AI solutions, yet they want to do this with guardrails,” said Kumar Goswami, CEO and cofounder of Komprise. “Data governance for AI will require the right unstructured data management strategy, which includes visibility across data storage silos, transparency into data sources, high-performance data mobility and secure data access."