#data-protection

Rising Cyber Budgets Collide with Core Resilience Gaps as AI Hype Drives Tool Sprawl

According to PwC's 2027 Global Digital Trust Insights survey covering nearly 4,000 business and tech leaders, roughly 84% expect their cybersecurity budgets to increase in 2027. Artificial intelligence stands as a primary driver, with 58% of respondents citing it among their top five investment priorities. Despite this influx of cash, widespread gaps remain across foundational security operations. Only 39% of organizations have fully formalized operational continuity plans tied to cyber risk, and barely 5% have deployed the full spectrum of core data protection measures examined by the report. Responsible AI governance leads the list of specific AI investments at 42%, followed by platform hardening at 38% and supply chain defense at 35%. However, many defensive teams are struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of vendor-introduced generative AI features, which frequently trigger regulatory and visibility headaches without adding baseline protection. Industry experts warn against falling into an additive trap where organizations continually purchase new dashboards, sensors, and telemetry agents rather than eliminating attack paths. Basic capabilities are still lagging across the board, with only 49% of surveyed teams having fully implemented data classification policies and just 48% running comprehensive data loss prevention tooling. To counter this sprawl, leaders recommend focusing on subtractive security measures—such as pruning standing privileges, enforcing network segmentation, and mapping critical business dependencies—to shrink the overall blast radius regardless of whether threats operate at human or automated machine speeds.