Heimdal Survey: Executives Four Times More Confident About AI Risk Than the Teams Managing It

**Executive summary:** Heimdal’s survey of 1,000 UK and US IT professionals finds AI adoption has outpaced security controls by roughly two-to-one, executives are significantly more likely than frontline practitioners to say AI risk is under control, and organizations lack sufficient visibility and technical guardrails; the report cites a public January 2026 disclosure where sensitive documents were uploaded to ChatGPT as an example of data-leak risk.