AI adoption surging in the enterprise

The rapid pace of adoption of AI in the enterprise is opening organisations up to brand new threat vectors, according to research from Zscaler.

An analysis of AI transactions across the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange cloud security platform found that the volume of transactions surged 600% in the 12 months to January. That month saw more than 3 billion transactions across the platform.

The findings indicate that despite the mounting security risk and increasing number of data protection incidents, enterprises are rapidly adopting AI tools, Zscaler said.

ChatGPT is currently the most popular GenAI application, accounting for 52% of analysed transactions. This was followed by AI-powered chatbot Drift (8%) and the OpenAI application (8%). OpenAI also developed ChatGPT.

The research found that the manufacturing sector is responsible for more than 20% enterprise AI or machine learning transactions, making it the industry leader. Other major contributors included finance and insurance (17%), technology (14%), services sectors (13%) and retail/wholesale (5%).

The research also suggests that use of GenAI within the enterprise exposes organisations to risks including data leaks, new data privacy and security risks introduced by AI applications, and data quality concerns. Threat actors are also increasingly utilising AI within their attacks, which is another avenue security teams must prepare for.

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