Press Release
New ISACA Research: 56% of Digital Trust Pros Don’t Know How Fast They Could Shut Down AI After a Security Incident
Preview of AI Pulse Poll 2026 from ISACA shows organizations are deploying AI faster
than they can govern it
Bangalore, India (26 March 2026)—AI technology is being adopted rapidly within many workplaces, but organizations are not necessarily keeping up with the governance and security measures needed to protect themselves from its risks, according to an advance look at select findings from ISACA’s 2026 AI Pulse Poll, released at RSA Conference 2026, which examines the latest trends related to AI use, policies and standards, workforce impact, incident response security, and more.
The global pulse poll, which gathered responses from more than 3,400 digital trust professionals across IT audit, governance, cybersecurity, privacy and emerging technology roles, finds that amidst increasing AI utilization at enterprises, there appears to be limited human oversight over AI decision-making, little disclosure around AI use, and uncertainty around AI security incident response and accountability for AI system harm.
When it comes to AI issues, more than half of respondents (56 percent) indicate they do not know how quickly they could immediately halt an AI system due to a security incident if needed. Thirty-two percent believe they could halt it within 60 minutes, and 7 percent say it would take them more than 60 minutes.
Additionally, less than half of respondents (43 percent) have high confidence in their organization’s ability to investigate and explain to leadership or regulators if a serious incident with an AI system occurred, while 27 percent express low to no confidence.
“While organizations may feel the push to adopt AI technology quickly to keep pace and leverage its capabilities, it is imperative they have the proper guardrails and governance in place before doing so,” said Jenai Marinkovic, vCISO/CTO, Tiro Security, co-founder and board chair of GRCIE, and ISACA Emerging Trends Working Group member. “AI brings so much promise and potential, but also an enormous amount of risk related to security and privacy. Enterprises need to ensure the right people, policies, processes, and plans are in place to be able to not only use AI effectively and responsibility, but also to avoid potential major disruption if crisis hits.”
