Agentic AI adoption is increasing faster than the integration of safety measures, as companies try to avoid being left behind in an AI-driven economy while minimising risks to operations.
Regional executives at AI and data trust firm Veeam announced several new offerings at the opening event of the VeeamON 2026 world tour in New York this week.
Tim Pfaelzer, GM and SVP for EMEA at Veeam, said there is no AI without data security, and no trust in AI without data resilience.
The company stressed that organisations must know not only what data they have, but also where it resides and who has access to it. This is why visibility over identities in systems has emerged as a priority.
According to Veeam, the ratio of non-human identities to human identities within companies currently stands at 82 to one. Therefore, visibility of identities is essential.
Pfaelzer was joined by Ian Engelbrecht, field CTO for EMEA; Brendan Widlake, regional director and country manager for Africa; and Mena Migally, regional VP for EMEA East at Veeam. They highlighted the role that newly introduced technology will play in the integration and management of agentic AI going forward.
They emphasised the relevance of one new framework solution introduced in New York: the Veeam Data and AI Trust Maturity Model, designed to help organisations assess, benchmark and strengthen how they govern and operationalise AI. This technology is now at the forefront of Veeam’s mandate to help organisations manage their data, cement AI strategies and keep threats at bay.
According to Deloitte's State of Enterprise AI research from January, the percentage of companies using agentic AI at least moderately is currently 23% and is projected to rise to 74% within two years. Meanwhile, the research shows that only 30% have frameworks for AI risk management in place, and just 21% are ready to govern autonomous AI agents at scale.
Pfaelzer said the ability to govern agentic AI through guardrails is particularly important given the gaps that Veeam has identified as "the converging data crises". These include a visibility gap (caused by fragmented and unstructured data at AI speed), an AI trust gap (caused by lagging data security and governance) and a resilience gap (caused by escalating risk).
According to Veeam, ransomware remains the most prevalent threat to organisations in Africa, exacerbated by a shortage of skills and a lack of awareness.
“Data remains the lifeblood of any organisation. One of the challenges in Africa is that customers are not implementing international best practices. The South African market is more mature than other markets in Africa, but there are still challenges,” said Widlake.
He referred to Veeam’s Data Trust and Resilience Report 2026, which found that digital transformation, cloud adoption and AI have increased the value of enterprise data and expanded the attack surface around it. The report also found that AI is amplifying risk faster than governance can keep up, with 43% of respondents claiming AI adoption is outpacing security, and 42% lacking visibility into AI tools and models.
This, Veeam said, reinforces why resilience must combine visibility, enforced controls, proven recovery testing and executive alignment.
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