Every organisation surveyed in Singapore reports that data challenges have already slowed AI progress — a finding from Veeam‘s new global C-level study, released at VeeamON London, which surveyed 600 senior executives across financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and technology.

The research exposes a sharp divergence between AI adoption ambition and operational readiness. While 85 per cent of Singapore organisations are already using or piloting AI agents, only 25 per cent are very confident they can detect AI systems operating outside approved parameters — well below the 38 per cent global reading.

Singapore’s Data Trust Gap

Singapore’s AI ambitions align closely with its refreshed National AI Strategy, which targets 10,000 enterprises meaningfully using AI over three years. But the Veeam data suggests enforcement is lagging intent. Only 40 per cent of global leaders are very confident they can isolate and precisely reverse an agentic AI failure, and fewer than a third of organisations running AI today could identify — within minutes — which systems an agent accessed, what actions it took, or what data it used.

Shadow AI is a particular concern locally. In Singapore, 45 per cent of executives cite data being used to train external AI as a top Shadow AI risk, the highest rate in Asia-Pacific Japan and tied with broader cyber risk. Fifty per cent flag personal data misuse and cross-border transfer restrictions as their leading compliance concerns over the next 12 months.

“Most organisations don’t have an AI adoption problem; they have an AI trust problem. The first phase of AI was defined by infrastructure investment, experimentation, and acceleration. The next phase will be defined by trust.” — Anand Eswaran, CEO, Veeam

Governance and Ownership

The research highlights fragmented ownership as a core barrier. Organisations where CISOs own AI agent risk are 24 per cent more likely to detect rogue AI behaviour; those relying on shared ownership are 47 per cent less likely to do so. Among fully AI-ready organisations, 97 per cent report measurable business benefits from data and AI investments, compared with 48 per cent overall.

The full report is available at go.veeam.com/data-ai-trust-gap-report.