EMA Research and Skyhigh Security Report Ranks AI Data Flow Security as Top DSPM Investment Driver

EMA Research and Skyhigh Security published a report on how organizations address data security needs as artificial intelligence adoption expands. The study tied investment drivers to securing AI data flows and contrasted passive auditing with real-time protection.

The research described an environment where enterprise data systems are expanding faster than legacy security tools can track. It also reported that organizations placed more emphasis on visibility, governance, and real-time protection as they deploy AI and agentic systems.

EMA surveyed 225 IT, security, and data governance leaders across North American enterprises to assess emerging priorities and baseline capabilities for modern data security. The study reported that securing AI data flows accounted for 64.4% of respondents’ DSPM investment drivers, ahead of exfiltration prevention at 56%.

“This data should serve as a massive wake-up call for the industry: visibility alone is a losing strategy,” Sanjay Castelino, president at Skyhigh Security, said. “Discovering where your data lives is just the starting point. If you can’t enforce policies and apply inline protection in real time as data moves across users, cloud services, and AI applications, you aren’t actually securing anything. Skyhigh Security is bridging that gap by turning DSPM insights into active, immediate enforcement.” The report listed survey findings including that 46.7% said auditing alone was not enough and that real-time residency enforcement was required, while 40.9% identified AI training workflows as a leading source of shadow data. “The era of treating data security as a compliance exercise is over,” Christopher Steffan, VP of Research at EMA, said.

Skyhigh Security also described using its converged Security Service Edge (SSE) portfolio to unite active DSPM with real-time inline enforcement, including discovery and inline controls for model inputs and outputs and support for encryption key ownership and consistent policy enforcement.

The organizations said the report, titled “Leveraging DSPM and Artificial Intelligence to Solve Data Security Challenges,” addressed these data security challenges in the context of AI adoption.

Provided by Globe Newswire on behalf of Skyhigh Security. Click to read original content.