NEWS
AI maturity is falling across the UK, new research reveals
More than half( 56 %) of UK-based organisations are showing this type of AI activity, reflecting growing interest in large-scale experimentation.
“ Whilst we’ re still in the early days of AI implementation, there is a clear ambition in the UK to not just invest in AI but become a European leader with this technology,” said Damian Stirrett, Group Vice President and General Manager UK & Ireland at ServiceNow.
The number of organisations making significant strides in AI data governance jumped by 5 % year-on-year according to the research. Similarly, those succeeding in breaking down data and operational silos increased slightly to 41 %.
According to new research by software company ServiceNow and Oxford Economics, AI maturity across the UK has dropped by nine points as enterprises struggle to keep pace with rapid innovation.
Innovation is thriving according to the report, with over half of organisations in Europe and the Middle East launching more than 100 AI use cases in the past year.
“ Organisations must prioritise automation platforms with a securityfirst mindset. These platforms must offer a layered security approach, integrating features like robust encryption, AI-driven threat detection, identity and access management and automated compliance tools. By choosing platforms designed and architected with security at their core, businesses can safeguard their data ecosystems against potential cyber threats while maintaining trust and compliance in a rapidly advancing digital landscape,” said Bill Conner, Former Advisor to Interpol and GCHQ and CEO of AI driven integration company Jitterbit.
Tenable research reveals widespread cloud misconfigurations exposing critical data
Tenable, the exposure management company, today released its 2025 Cloud Security Risk Report, which revealed that 9 % of publicly accessible cloud storage contains sensitive data. Ninetyseven percent of such data is restricted or confidential, creating easy and prime targets for threat actors.
Cloud environments face dramatically increased risk due to exposed sensitive data, misconfigurations, underlying vulnerabilities and poorly stored secrets – such as passwords, API keys and credentials.
Key findings from the report Include:
• Secrets found in diverse cloud resources, putting organisations at risk: Over half of organisations( 54 %) store at least one secret directly in Amazon Web Services( AWS) Elastic Container Service( ECS) task definitions – creating a direct attack path. Similar issues were found among organisations using Google Cloud Platform( GCP) Cloud Run( 52 %) and Microsoft Azure Logic Apps workflows( 31 %). Alarmingly, 3.5 % of all AWS Elastic Compute Cloud( EC2) instances contain secrets in user data – major risk given how widely EC2 is used.
• Cloud workload security is improving, but toxic combinations persist: While the number of organisations with a‘ toxic cloud trilogy’ – a workload that is publicly exposed, critically vulnerable and highly privileged – has decreased from 38 % to 29 %, this dangerous combination still represents a significant and common risk.
• Using identity providers( IdPs) alone doesn’ t eliminate risk: While 83 % of AWS organisations are exercising best practices in using IdP services to manage their cloud identities, overly-permissive defaults, excessive entitlements and standing permissions still expose them to identity-based threats.
“ Despite the security incidents we have witnessed over the past few years, organisations continue to leave critical cloud assets, from sensitive data to secrets, exposed through avoidable misconfigurations,” said Ari Eitan, Director of Cloud Security Research, Tenable.
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