{
  "id": 6564535,
  "title": "Data trust and AI readiness survey: Closing the confidence gap",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/10/data-trust-and-ai-readiness-survey-closing-the-confidence-gap",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-10T08:47:44.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "ITWeb",
    "slug": "itweb",
    "url": "https://www.itweb.co.za/article/data-trust-and-ai-readiness-survey-closing-the-confidence-gap/raYAyMorDaA7J38N"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A new survey by ITWeb and Veeam reveals that while most senior African executives are confident in their ability to recover clean data after a ransomware attack, many have never tested their recovery systems. The survey of 140 senior IT, data and cyber security leaders found that 52% are very or extremely confident in their data recovery capabilities, but 32% have never performed a full technical recovery test. This creates a gap between perceived confidence and actual capability. Tahir Latif, data trust and governance lead for Veeam, warns that without regular testing, critical data may not be restored when it matters most. AI adoption is also fragmented, with only 14% of organizations embedding AI into core business operations, while 11% have employees using unapproved public AI tools. The main barriers to data trust are skills shortages, inconsistent data classification, budget constraints, lack of visibility into critical data, and legacy infrastructure. However, organizations are recognizing the need to boost budgets for data protection, cyber resilience and AI governance. Multi-country organizations show higher AI maturity compared to single-country organizations. The survey concludes that building data trust through visibility, governance, resilience and accountability is crucial for scaling AI effectively.",
  "summary": "A new ITWeb and Veeam survey reveals a confidence gap: 52% of African executives trust their data recovery, yet 32% have never tested it.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}