Survey of security leaders shows 74% reported an AI breach in 2024
AUSTIN, Texas, March 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- HiddenLayer, the leading security provider for artificial intelligence (AI) models and assets, released its second annual AI Threat Landscape Report today, spotlighting the evolving security challenges organizations face as AI adoption accelerates.
AI is driving business innovation at an unheard-of scale, with 89% of IT leaders stating AI models in production are critical to their organization's success. Yet, security teams are racing to keep up, spending nearly half their time mitigating AI risks. The report underscores that security is key to unlocking AI's immense potential. Encouragingly, companies are taking action, with 96% increasing their AI security budgets in 2025 to stay ahead of emerging threats.
The report surveyed 250 IT leaders to shed light on the increasing security risks associated with AI adoption, including the material impact of AI breaches, insufficient protections against adversarial attacks, and a lack of clarity around governance responsibilities.
Key findings include:
- An Increase in AI Attacks: 74% of organizations report definitely knowing they had an AI breach in 2024, up from 67% reporting the same last year, emphasizing the need for companies to act quickly to protect their AI systems.
- Failure to Disclose Incidents: Nearly half (45%) of organizations opted to not report an AI-related security breach due to concerns over reputational damage.
- Material Impact of AI Breaches: 89% say most or all AI models in production are critical to their success. But many continue to operate without comprehensive safeguards with only a third (32%) deploying a technology solution to address threats.
- Internal Debate About Who is Responsible for Security: 76% of organizations report ongoing internal debate about which teams should control AI security, illustrating the need for leaders to define ownership as AI becomes central to business operations clearly.
"Securing AI isn't just about protection—it's about accelerating progress," said Chris "Tito" Sestito, Co-Founder and CEO of HiddenLayer. "Organizations that embrace securing AI as a strategic enabler, not just a safeguard, will be able to move more quickly to realize its benefits. This year's report shows an encouraging shift: companies are recognizing that comprehensive security accelerates AI adoption, builds trust, and strengthens competitive advantage. HiddenLayer is committed to partnering with those organizations to protect their AI assets so they can continue to innovate."
Additional trends identified in the report include:
- The rise of "shadow AI:" AI systems being used without official approval is also a growing concern, with 72% of IT leaders flagging it as a major risk.
- AI attack origination: 51% of AI attack sources originate from North America. Other regions contributing to AI threats include Europe (34%), Asia (32%), South America (21%), and Africa (17%).
- Source of AI breaches: 45% identified breaches coming from malware in models pulled from public repositories, while 33% originated from chatbots, and 21% from third party applications.
Looking ahead, the AI security landscape will continue to face even more sophisticated challenges in 2025. Predictions for what's on the horizon in the next year include:
- Agentic AI as a Target: Integrating agentic AI will blur the lines between adversarial AI and traditional cyberattacks, leading to a new wave of targeted threats. Expect phishing and data leakage via agentic systems to be a hot topic.
- Erosion of Trust in Digital Content: As deepfake technologies become more accessible, audio, visual, and text-based digital content will face a near-total erosion of trust. Expect to see advances in AI watermarking to help combat such attacks.
- Adversarial AI: Organizations will integrate adversarial machine learning into standard red team exercises, testing for AI vulnerabilities proactively before deployment.
- AI-Specific Incident Response: For the first time, formal incident response guidelines tailored to AI systems will be developed, providing a structured approach to AI-related security breaches. Expect to see playbooks developed for AI risks.
- Advanced Threat Evolution: Fraud, misinformation, and network attacks will escalate as AI evolves across domains such as computer vision (CV), audio, and natural language processing (NLP). Expect to see attackers leveraging AI to increase both the speed and scale of attack, as well as semi-autonomous offensive models designed to aid in penetration testing and security research.
- Emergence of AIPC (AI-Powered Cyberattacks): As hardware vendors capitalize on AI with advances in bespoke chipsets and tooling to power AI technology, expect to see attacks targeting AI-capable endpoints intensify.
HiddenLayer's products and services accelerate the process of securing AI, with its AISec Platform providing a comprehensive AI security solution that ensures the integrity and safety of models throughout an organization's MLOps pipeline. As part of the platform, HiddenLayer's provides its Artificial Intelligence Detection & Response (AIDR), which enables organizations to automate and scale the protection of AI models and ensure their security in real-time, its Model Scanner, which allows companies to evaluate the security and integrity of their AI artifacts before deploying them, and Automated Red Teaming, which provides one-click vulnerability testing to identify, remediate, and document security risks.
For more information, view the full report here.
About HiddenLayer
HiddenLayer, a Gartner-recognized Cool Vendor for AI Security, is the leading provider of Security for AI. Its security platform helps enterprises safeguard the machine learning models behind their most important products. HiddenLayer is the only company to offer turnkey security for AI that does not add unnecessary complexity to models and does not require access to raw data and algorithms. Founded by a team with deep roots in security and ML, HiddenLayer aims to protect enterprise's AI from inference, bypass, extraction attacks, and model theft. The company is backed by a group of strategic investors, including M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, Moore Strategic Ventures, Booz Allen Ventures, IBM Ventures, and Capital One Ventures.
Contact
Maia Gryskiewicz
SutherlandGold for HiddenLayer
hiddenlayer@sutherlandgold.com
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