Michael HakkertThere’s a growing gap in cybersecurity that most organizations don’t talk about openly. It’s the gap between what they believe about their security posture and what they can actually prove.
AI Is Widening That Gap
For the fourth consecutive year, Gigamon surveyed global security and IT leaders to understand how organizations are securing and managing increasingly complex hybrid cloud environments. This year, the findings point to something more fundamental than just change. AI is no longer on the horizon. It is already embedded in how organizations operate, how data moves, and how attackers work. And as that happens, confidence in AI security is rising faster than the ability to validate it.
That Disconnect Is What This Year’s Hybrid Cloud Security Survey Research Brings Into Focus
The 2026 Hybrid Cloud Security Survey draws on insights from more than 1,000 security and IT leaders worldwide, including over 300 CISOs across six global regions. It looks at where confidence holds up, where it starts to break down, and why visibility into data in motion has become so critical.
One finding stands out. Organizations are investing heavily in security, yet many still cannot clearly see what is happening across their environments. Nine in ten respondents say they are increasing spending on security technologies. At the same time, breach rates have climbed to 65 percent, the highest level we have seen in three years. Even more telling, 83 percent of incidents now involve AI in some form.
It forces a simple but uncomfortable question: Are organizations actually becoming more secure, or are they becoming more confident in the tools they have already deployed?
The Answer Is Not as Reassuring as Many Would Hope
Security teams are doing the right things on paper. They are adding tools, strengthening governance, and applying AI to improve detection and response. But the environments they are trying to protect have become much harder to observe. Data moves across data centers, public cloud, private cloud, containers, SaaS platforms, and encrypted channels. East-West traffic adds another layer. And AI accelerates all of it.
When visibility is fragmented, teams can see that something went wrong. What they cannot always see is how it happened, where it started, or what data was affected. One in four respondents said they could not identify the root cause of their most serious breach in the past year.
This is where the illusion starts to take hold. From the outside, it looks like control. Inside the environment, there are still blind spots.
The CISO perspective shared in the Hybrid Cloud Security Survey brings this into sharper focus. CISOs carry the accountability, but they do not always have the level of proof they need. Many are working with incomplete visibility while being asked to stand behind full confidence. That gap is not theoretical. It shows up in how quickly teams can respond, how accurately they can assess risk, and how confidently they can communicate with the board.
That is why visibility has moved to the center of the conversation. More than 90 percent of organizations agree that securing data depends on being able to see it as it moves across the environment. And 92 percent say deep observability is foundational to securing AI deployments.
The way forward is not about stacking more tools on top of the problem. It is about making existing tools more effective by giving them access to the right data. The Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline delivers network-derived telemetry that shows how data actually moves across hybrid cloud environments, including encrypted traffic and lateral movement. That level of insight helps teams move from assumptions to evidence.
The 2026 Hybrid Cloud Security Survey is a reality check. It shows where progress is real, where confidence may be outpacing control, and where organizations need better proof. Download the full report to see how your organization compares and to understand what it takes to close the gap between confidence and control in an AI-driven world.
CONTINUE THE DISCUSSION
People are talking about this in the Gigamon Community’s AI Exchange group.
Share your thoughts today
