The AI Governance Gap

2026-09-18 · Industry Analysis

OneTrust’s 2026 AI-Ready Governance Report finds that enterprise AI adoption is advancing considerably faster than the governance structures designed to control it. Based on a Sapio Research survey of 1,200 senior business decision-makers across eight countries, 74% report departmental or scaled AI adoption and 52% are already using AI across multiple functions or embedding it into business processes. Yet only 5% report clear coordination and accountability across the entire AI lifecycle. The gap becomes particularly significant with agentic AI. 87% of organisations encourage AI-agent use, but only 47% say clear governance, oversight and controls are in place. OneTrust’s findings also suggest AI incidents are becoming part of normal enterprise operations rather than exceptional events: 86% reported at least one of the surveyed categories of AI-related incident during the previous year.