The Compliance Convergence Challenge: Permission Sprawl and AI Regulations in Hybrid Environments

**Executive summary:** Enterprise security leaders face a convergence of data privacy and AI regulations that expose organizations to significant risk due to pervasive permission sprawl; multi-cloud complexity and AI workloads further amplify access governance challenges. The report argues for proactive, automated governance—specifically automated ACL analysis, metadata-driven policy enforcement, and cross-environment visibility—to prevent over-privileged access, ensure auditability, and enable compliant AI innovation.