Fifth annual report uncovers that nearly six in 10 organizations are failing to keep pace with data changes, with data access challenges significantly impacting the ROI of data platform investments.

Immuta, the data security experts, announced the findings of its fifth annual State of Data Security Report, which highlights the optimism and apprehension around evolving data infrastructure as organizations navigate data security, governance, and compliance. The 2025 State of Data Security Report, commissioned by Immuta and conducted by customer voice platform UserEvidence, surveyed more than 700 data leaders and professionals from enterprise organizations across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

“Legacy systems for provisioning data access are broken,” said Matthew Carroll, Co-founder and CEO at Immuta. “The core issue revolves around change management focused on three factors: people, processes, and technology. But as the number of users – both human and non-human – continues to grow, and as they ask more questions and demand more access than ever before, enterprises are struggling to keep pace. Manual processes can no longer scale to meet the need for secure, timely access to data. The only way to enable faster decision-making – which could be the catalyst for a new life-saving drug discovery, preventing costly fraud scams, or even saving lives on the battlefield – is by putting an emphasis on establishing proven best practices for how data is provisioned as a core part of IT and business strategy.”

AI Presents New Challenges for Security and Access in Data Management
It’s no surprise that data practitioners today face new AI-driven data demands. But according to the report, 60% of respondents claim that their organization is failing to keep pace with these data changes. In addition, traditional data architecture challenges persist, with nearly half of organizations identifying compliance and privacy as primary data concerns, and nearly two-thirds (64%) citing significant challenges in providing timely and secure access to data for authorized users. Data leaders must find balance between data security and access to realize the full potential of data platforms and AI investments.

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The focus on data platforms remains strong, as organizations continue to invest in them to store and leverage their data. However, 64% of data leaders state that data access challenges have significantly impacted the ROI of their organization’s platforms. Data access issues create tangible downstream effects on business performance, including missed internal goals (31%), lost revenue (30%), and an inability to collaborate with other lines of business or external partners (30%) as the biggest impacts.

Complex Access Controls Are Hindering AI Implementation
A successful data provisioning strategy must also account for growing AI adoption. Without seamless and secure access to quality data, organizations risk stalling their AI initiatives and failing to capitalize on its transformative potential. Three-quarters of organizations are likely to implement AI/ML applications in the next 12 months and 47% believe that this AI/ML integration will have a high impact on business outcomes. Despite this optimism surrounding AI deployments, more than half (55%) of data leaders believe their data security strategy is failing to keep pace with the evolution of AI, up from 50% reported in last year’s report. These factors, including difficulty integrating AI into existing systems (46%), a shortage of skills necessary to manage AI systems (39%), and overly complex data access controls (29%) are slowing AI adoption cycles and putting organizations at a significant competitive disadvantage.

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Tactics for Balancing Access and Governance to Achieve AI Success
AI will drive business value if organizations strike the balance between access and agility versus governance and security. To address these challenges, data leaders are likely to implement initiatives to make data governance, access, and compliance easier, such as implementing:

• Data monitoring systems (82%) to enhance data protection by understanding the data they have and how it’s being used.
• Additional cloud platforms (76%) to keep pace with growing data volumes with flexible, accessible platforms that give the right teams access to the right data.
• Internal data marketplaces (68%) to define the roles, rules, and capabilities that lead to success with AI and other initiatives.

“Data platform owners are focused on driving adoption and empowering individuals to use data to inform decision-making, while also incorporating controls to ensure data isn’t being overshared,” said Steve Touw, CTO, Immuta. “We’re calling on data leaders to envision a new approach to data access for their organization: one where consumers can efficiently discover data products, where data stewards can seamlessly enforce policies that don’t hinder progress, and where data accelerates business innovation.”