Companies are adopting artificial intelligence faster than they are able to safely manage it. New findings from Barracuda Research reveal that nearly half of senior IT leaders say their teams lack the skills needed to securely manage the AI their organizations already use.
The situation also affects those responsible for data security and governance. According to the Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026, prepared by IBM, 68% of organizations that suffered a data breach lacked policies to manage AI or detect so-called “shadow AI.” The data highlights the need to strengthen AI governance practices, as well as data protection and security, especially among those responsible for supervising these areas.
Accelerate AI adoption
In this context, Barracuda Networks has introduced Barracuda AI Data Security, an AI-based security and governance solution designed specifically for resource-constrained organizations and managed service providers (MSPs).
The solution enables businesses to confidently accelerate AI adoption, while protecting sensitive data, enabling responsible use of AI, and helping to demonstrate regulatory compliance. In this way, IT and security managers have tools to monitor the use of AI and establish policies adapted to the needs of each organization.
“AI adoption is accelerating faster than most businesses can keep up with, posing one of the most pressing new security and compliance challenges facing organizations today,” said Neal Bradbury, chief product officer at Barracuda. “Organizations need a practical way to protect AI as a new attack surface, safeguard sensitive data, ensure responsible use, and demonstrate regulatory compliance.”
For IT managers, this means taking on new roles related to monitoring AI tools, while security managers must ensure that their use does not create new avenues of exposure for corporate data.
A complete and intelligent solution
Barracuda AI Data Security helps businesses embrace AI with confidence by combining security, governance, and compliance into a single solution. Provides visibility into AI usage, enables secure use of authorized tools, inspects prompts and loads in real time, and generates audit-ready evidence of policy enforcement.
It is urgent to strengthen AI governance, data protection and security practices
The result is faster adoption of AI, accompanied by higher levels of security, better regulatory compliance and lower operational costs. For those in charge of organizations, this approach also facilitates control over which tools employees can use and under what conditions.
Powered by the Barracuda IQ AI engine, the solution extends protection to more than 1,300 generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, including Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. The approach integrates security and governance through different capabilities:
- AI data protection– Automatically prevents sensitive information, such as customer data, passwords, financial records, or proprietary code, from reaching generative AI services, without requiring initial configuration.
- AI threat detection– Blocks prompt injection attacks, jailbreak attempts, hate speech, and other policy-violating content using multi-layered detection based on the Barracuda IQ AI engine and aligned with the OWASP LLM Top 10.
- Audit trail prepared for regulatory compliance: captures every interaction with AI and enables one-click export generation for insurers and auditors. This capability provides compliance and security managers with evidence of policy enforcement.
- Flexible AI Policies: Allows you to set custom rules for equipment, tools, and data types. In this way, those responsible can authorize the use of AI when it provides value and restrict it when it implies risks for the organization.
The company believes that this approach allows those responsible to face the expansion of artificial intelligence with greater visibility and control, reducing the distance between the speed of adoption of these tools and the ability of organizations to manage them securely.
