Key facts:
- 76 percent of CISOs report limited visibility into AI-driven traffic as a major barrier to securing AI adoption
- 80 percent cite inadequate governance surrounding unsanctioned AI use as the top challenge to securing data
- 43 percent rank AI corporate governance as a top security priority
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 29, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gigamon, a leader in deep observability, today released research revealing that the shift to Hybrid AI is creating a new governance challenge for CISOs as organizations adopt a growing mix of AI models, applications, and infrastructure. The Gigamon “CISO Empowerment in the Age of AI Risk” report, based on global responses from more than 300 CISOs, reveals growing AI-related security incidents, visibility challenges, and governance concerns as AI adoption accelerates.
The findings come as AI begins to follow a path similar to cloud. Rather than standardizing on a single model, organizations are increasingly combining frontier, open-weight, specialized, and privately hosted AI models to balance performance, security, governance, sovereignty, and cost. This emerging Hybrid AI architecture offers greater choice and flexibility, but also creates new connections among models, applications, infrastructure, and organizational data that security teams must be able to understand and govern.
CISOs Face a Growing Governance Gap
“Hybrid AI is moving faster than governance,” said Grant Yacomeni, CISO at Gigamon. “Organizations want the flexibility to choose the right AI model for every workload, but that flexibility depends on having the visibility to govern it. CISOs need to understand which AI systems are in use, how they interact with applications and data, and what is happening across those connections. You cannot govern what you cannot see."
The report shows that governance is struggling to keep pace with AI adoption. Among organizations experiencing a breach over the past year, 83 percent report AI-related security incidents, with 30 percent reporting internal leaks into AI systems and 30 percent reporting unsanctioned AI use. For CISOs, that governance challenge increasingly extends into the boardroom, where a lack of understanding of security best practices is a concern for seven in 10 CISOs, who say it could cause AI adoption to outpace security readiness. Closing that gap is becoming a priority, with 41 percent ranking improved board understanding of AI risks and benefits among their top security priorities for the next 12 months.
The stakes are also becoming more personal. More than one in four CISOs are concerned about losing their job following a serious cyber incident, reflecting the growing accountability security leaders face as they balance the risk of AI innovation with security and risk.
Visibility Becomes a Top Priority for CISOs
The research also points to a fundamental shift in how CISOs are thinking about security investment. Limited visibility into AI-driven traffic is a major barrier to securing AI adoption for 76 percent of CISOs, while 45 percent are prioritizing improved visibility into AI-driven data flows across hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Despite these concerns, organizations continue to invest heavily in security technology. Nearly nine in 10 CISOs (88 percent) report deploying new tools to improve detection and visibility, yet breaches continued to rise, increasing 18 percent year over year, underscoring that additional tools alone are not delivering the context CISOs need across increasingly complex environments.
The research reveals visibility gaps across several critical areas:
- Incident Response. When responding to an incident, only 27 percent of CISOs say their organization can identify root cause and restore normal operations within 72 hours, compared with 48 percent of other C-level executives, highlighting a significant gap between operational reality and executive perceptions of security readiness.
- East-West Traffic. Lateral East-West traffic is identified by 36 percent of CISOs as an area of greatest breach risk, an increasingly important concern as AI models, applications, agents, data, and infrastructure communicate across distributed environments.
- Encrypted Traffic. Visibility into encrypted traffic was identified by 86 percent of CISOs as critical for post-quantum computing (PQC) readiness, while 89 percent say improved visibility into encrypted traffic could help reduce cyber insurance premiums.
The Role of Deep Observability in Hybrid AI
As organizations shift toward Hybrid AI, CISOs identified critical capabilities, including access to accurate network-derived telemetry and comprehensive visibility into data in motion. Network-derived telemetry, including packets, flows, and application-aware metadata adds context to metrics, events, logs, and traces (MELT) data, enabling deep observability that helps security teams understand how AI systems, applications, and data interact across hybrid cloud infrastructure. The need is clear, with 87 percent of CISOs reporting that deep observability is foundational to securing their AI deployments.
For More Information on the 2026 Hybrid Cloud Security Survey
The annual study, now in its fourth year, surveyed more than 1,000 security and IT leaders, including 307 CISOs, across Australia, France, Germany, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
- Read the blog, “Hybrid AI is Changing the CISO Mandate”
- Read the “CISO Insights: CISO Empowerment in the Age of AI” report based on data from more than 300 global CISOs
- Download the “2026 Hybrid Cloud Security Report: Reality Check: Exposing the AI Security Illusion” report based on data from more than 1,000 Security and IT leaders
- Get the “Financial Services Industry Insights: The Visibility Imperative in the Age of AI” report based on data from 139 Security and IT leaders in the Financial Services industry
About Gigamon
Gigamon® protects the hybrid cloud networks and data of the world’s most complex organizations. The AI-powered Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline delivers complete visibility into all data in motion by providing trusted, network-derived telemetry directly to cloud, security, and observability tools. With AI-driven insights across packets, flows, and application metadata, organizations can detect threats concealed in encrypted and lateral traffic, resolve network and application performance bottlenecks, and validate compliance while reducing cost and complexity. Gigamon is trusted by over 4,000 organizations worldwide, including 83 of the Fortune 100, major mobile network operators, and public sector agencies at every level. Learn more at gigamon.com.
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