The adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is catching corporate security experts off guard and the speed of change is leaving many struggling to keep pace with new threats.

The warning comes in a new report by Netskope Threat Labs which found a sharp rise in GenAI-driven data policy violations, continued phishing exposure and growing insider risk through personal cloud apps.

The company’s Cloud and Threat Report: 2026 found that data policy violations linked to GenAI applications more than doubled year-over-year, with the average organisation now recording 223 GenAI-related data policy violations per month. Among the top 25% of organisations, this figure rises to 2,100 incidents per month.

The research also highlighted the continued prevalence of shadow AI, despite growing investment in company-approved AI tools. While reliance on personal GenAI accounts has declined, 47% of GenAI users still access tools via personal, unmanaged accounts, either exclusively or alongside company-approved tools. In addition, 9 in 10 organisations now actively block at least one GenAI application, with the average organisation blocking ten tools, reflecting a tightening enforcement posture as AI usage expands.

The report explained: “We continue with GenAI platforms, such as Azure OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Vertex AI, which are rapidly gaining popularity due to their simplicity, flexibility, customizability, and scalability. They empower users to build custom applications or agents using the models of their choosing. And perhaps most importantly, they provide some security and privacy guarantees that differentiate them from many SaaS apps and on-prem solutions.

“At this stage, adoption of GenAI platforms is led by individuals experimenting with the relatively new technology, making GenAI platforms represent the fastest-growing category of shadow AI.”

Beyond GenAI-specific risks, longstanding cloud and identity threats remain persistent. Personal cloud applications are now involved in 60% of insider threat incidents, with regulated data, source code, intellectual property and credentials all exposed at concerning levels. Phishing also remains widespread, despite modest improvements in user awareness. Although user susceptibility declined by 27% year-on-year, 87 out of every 10,000 users still click on a phishing link each month.

It added the overall number of GenAI app users grew 200% over the past year, and the volume of prompts leapt by 500%. The average number of prompts sent to GenAI tools increased from an average of 3,000 to 18,000 per organisation per month.

The report found user uploads of regulated data (such as personal, financial, or healthcare data) represent the highest category of policy violations at 54%.  In total 90% of organisations revealed they actively block at least one GenAI application, up from 80% the previous year.

“Enterprise security teams exist in a constant state of change and new risks as organisations evolve and adversaries innovate,” said Ray Canzanese, director of Netskope Threat Labs. “However, GenAI adoption has shifted the goal posts. It represents a risk profile that has taken many teams by surprise in its scope and complexity, so much so that it feels like they are struggling to keep pace and losing sight of some security basics. Security teams need to expand their security posture to be ‘AI-Aware’, evolving policy and expanding the scope of existing tools like DLP, to foster a balance between innovation and security at all levels.”