Cybersecurity and Cost Pressures Shape Enterprise IT Priorities

CTERA’s 2025 State of Data and Cloud Strategy Survey highlights how enterprises are managing competing demands across cybersecurity, AI, and cloud adoption, reports IT Brief United States. The data shows ransomware resilience and cost control remain top of mind, while interest in AI is growing faster than organizations’ actual ability to deploy it at scale.

Ransomware continues to dominate the threat landscape, with every surveyed organization reporting at least one attack attempt in the past two years. The impact is far from uniform - some lost data permanently, others paid ransoms, and a notable share remain unsure of what happened to their compromised systems. The inconsistency in recovery points to a lingering gap between awareness of the problem and real preparedness.

AI sits high on executive agendas, but most deployments are still partial or experimental. Leaders want AI to improve customer experience, prediction, and data accuracy, yet only a small fraction are investing in the internal skills that would make those ambitions sustainable. The mismatch between enthusiasm and readiness suggests that many firms risk being held back by a lack of expertise and clear frameworks for adoption.

Security and compliance concerns, along with cost and siloed data, stand out as the main barriers to AI progress. At the same time, cloud strategies are gaining traction, especially at the C-level, though adoption levels are uneven across organizational tiers. Taken together, the survey findings reflect a moment where enterprises are trying to balance near-term security and cost challenges with longer-term bets on AI and cloud as cornerstones of their data strategy.