A survey of 1,000 senior IT, operations, and transformation leaders found that two in five large companies experienced an AI-related compliance or governance issue in the past year. The research, conducted by Sapio Research, suggests such problems are not rare, but rather a systemic challenge for organisations scaling AI adoption.
The respondents pointed to process-related issues as the root cause of 84% of these failures. In particular, legacy workflows — older, rigid procedures that were not designed for modern AI oversight — were singled out as a significant contributor. This indicates that technical safeguards alone are insufficient; outdated operational processes are leaving governance gaps.
For security and privacy teams, the findings reinforce the need to update internal workflows alongside AI tooling. Companies that modernise their compliance processes may be better positioned to avoid the costly incidents that are increasingly common among large enterprises. The survey does not break down the types of compliance issues, but the prevalence alone highlights a growing urgency for governance reform.