94 percent of organizations now use GenAI apps

New research from Netskope Threat Labs has found that 94 percent of organizations are now using GenAI apps, but interestingly more than 99 percent have controls in place to mitigate the risks that they pose.

Organizational use of GenAI has grown from 81 percent of companies using the apps in 2023. ChatGPT continues to be the most popular genAI app, being used in 84 percent of organizations.

Employee use rate of genAI apps has tripled from 2.6 percent of all people in organizations to 7.8 percent. Retail and technology organizations lead all industries with an average of more than 13 percent of all employees using GenAI apps monthly.

Organizations are now using an average of 9.6 GenAI apps, up from 7.6 a year ago. The top 25 percent of organizations now use at least 24, whereas the bottom 25 percent are using four at most.

"The common thread for organizations working to safely enable the use of apps in the enterprise, and mitigate the challenges across the threat landscape, is the need for modern data security," says Ray Canzanese, director of Netskope Threat Labs. "Gone are the days when data security was an afterthought. It must be seamlessly integrated into every aspect of an organization’s operations. From defending against phishing to safeguarding personal apps and managing GenAI, data security is no longer just a perimeter defense. It is a dynamic, proactive framework with real-time user coaching, DLP, and app-specific controls to stay ahead of an ever-changing threat landscape."

When it comes to securing these apps 45 percent of organizations use DLP to control the flow of data into them. Industry adoption of DLP for GenAI varies widely with telecommunications the highest at 64 percent.

In addition 34 percent of organizations use real-time interactive user coaching to empower individuals to make appropriate and informed decisions. 73 percent of the time, when prompted with warnings of a potential company violation, users opt to not proceed based on coaching information provided.

The report also shows that 73 percent of organizations block at least one GenAI app, with a steady rate of 2.4 apps blocked on average year over year.

You can get the full report from the Netskope site.

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