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65% OF ANALYSTS SAY AI WORKS BEST WHEN THE LOGIC IS MANAGED AT THE BUSINESS LEVEL, ALTERYX RESEARCH FINDS

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Alteryx, Inc., an AI-ready data and analytics company, today released its “2026 State of Data Analysts in the Age of AI” report, revealing that while AI is becoming central to business decision-making, human oversight remains critical to ensuring AI-generated outcomes are trusted and actionable. The research found that analysts spend nearly four hours per week validating and correcting AI-generated outputs, while poor data quality and governance continue to undermine AI and analytics initiatives. The findings also show that AI works best when the people closest to the business stay involved, with 65% of analysts saying AI and agent-based systems are most productive when the logic is managed at the business level. As organizations accelerate toward more agentic AI systems, the need for trusted data, governed logic and workflows, and human oversight continues to grow.

Key Findings at a Glance: 

  • 96% of data analysts are actively using AI tools in their roles 
  • 47% of failed AI and analytics projects are attributed to poor data quality or governance 
  • 65% of analysts say AI and agent-based systems are most productive when the logic is managed at the business level
  • Data analysts spend an average of 5.7 hours per week preparing and cleaning data, and an additional 3.7 hours per week checking and correcting AI outputs
  • Only 3% prefer fully autonomous AI without routine human involvement, while 46% favor a human-in-the-loop approach 

The findings point to a broader shift in how organizations are operationalizing AI. As businesses move from experimentation to deploying AI in core workflows and decision-making, trust increasingly depends on more than model performance alone. Analysts and operations teams play a critical role because they maintain business logic, governance standards, and operational context that help AI systems produce reliable and actionable outcomes.

Human Oversight Still Remains Central in the Age of Agentic AI

As AI becomes a bigger part of an analyst’s day-to-day work, the impact goes beyond simple productivity gains. Businesses are quickly adopting more advanced AI capabilities, like agentic AI, but, on the contrary, analysts are now spending more time reviewing, validating, and guiding AI-generated work. Over half (59%) expect to use AI agents to generate insights within the next year, and many are already using them to draft communications (59%) and manage workflows (54%).

Even as AI takes on a larger role in data-to-insight workflows, analysts remain closely involved because they are ultimately accountable for the quality, accuracy, and reliability of the outcomes. Nearly half (46%) prefer a human-in-the-loop approach where AI systems require human approval before taking action, while only 3% are comfortable with fully autonomous AI. The findings suggest that as AI becomes more embedded in business processes, trust, oversight, and human judgment remain essential to ensuring outputs are accurate, explainable, and aligned with business needs. 

“AI is already influencing how businesses make decisions every day, but our research highlights a reality many organizations are now confronting: trust matters just as much as speed,” said Andy MacMillan, CEO at Alteryx. “The people closest to the business play a critical role because they understand the logic, rules, and operational context behind decisions, whether that’s pricing models, compliance requirements, or operational thresholds, and that business logic is constantly evolving. AI can accelerate work, but organizations still need governed workflows and human oversight to ensure outcomes are visible, understandable, repeatable, and auditable across the organization.”

Data Challenges Continue to Limit AI Success

Behind every successful AI initiative is a strong data foundation, and many organizations are still struggling to get there. Even as AI adoption grows, ongoing issues with data quality, access, and governance continue to slow progress and limit AI effectiveness. Analysts say either poor data quality or governance is responsible for nearly half (47%) of failed AI and analytics projects, making it the biggest barrier to AI success.

Most (79%) analysts believe their data is ready for AI at scale, yet the day-to-day reality looks much different. Analysts still spend an average of nearly 6 hours each week preparing and cleaning data, plus nearly another 4 hours reviewing and correcting AI-generated outputs, checking for issues such as incorrect calculations, inconsistent metrics, or responses that don’t align with company policies and definitions. Governance concerns are also rising, with access control and data exposure (42%) ranking as the top issue, followed closely by regulatory compliance (41%). These findings show that as companies push AI deeper into business operations, the people closest to the business increasingly need to provide the context AI relies on, including not just clean data, but also the business logic, workflows, policies, and governance that shape how decisions are made and acted on.

AI Becomes Core to Business Decision-Making

AI is quickly becoming part of everyday business decision-making. Nearly all analysts surveyed (96%) say they use AI tools in their work every day, and organizations are already seeing the impact. Among IT leaders, 85% report noticeable gains in employee productivity, while 79% say AI is helping teams make decisions faster.

As AI adoption grows, AI-generated insights are carrying more weight across the business. Half (50%) of analysts and 62% of IT leaders say that most or almost all business-critical decisions are now influenced by AI insights.

But generating insights faster doesn’t always make decisions easier. The biggest challenge organizations face is helping business leaders understand and trust AI-generated outputs, with 43% saying interpreting and explaining AI insights remains a key barrier. At the same time, companies continue embedding AI into core technologies like cloud data warehouses (40%) and business intelligence tools (39%), making AI an increasingly central part of how businesses operate.

The Evolving Role of the Data Analyst

Analysts increasingly see AI as a collaborator that changes how work gets done, not a replacement for human expertise. In fact, 82% say automation is making them more effective by helping them work faster and focus on higher-value tasks.

As AI becomes more embedded in everyday operations, the role of the analyst is evolving from producing insights to guiding how AI systems operate. Over the next five years, 40% believe changing skill requirements will have the biggest impact on their responsibilities, while 36% point to the growing importance of real-time analytics. The findings suggest that analysts and operational teams will play an increasingly important role in defining, validating, and evolving the business logic AI systems rely on to deliver trusted, repeatable outcomes. This includes the rules, calculations, and operational processes that determine how the business actually runs, whether it’s updating tax rules in different countries, changing sales commission structures, adjusting supply chain thresholds, or applying compliance and pricing policies as conditions evolve.

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UNGOVERNED AI AGENTS AND SOPHISTICATED DEEPFAKES POSE CRITICAL THREATS FOR THE UAE & SAUDI ARABIA ORGANISATIONS, NEW KNOWBE4 RESEARCH WARNS

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July 2, 2026

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KnowBe4, the global leader in digital workforce security, securing both AI agents and humans, today announced the launch of its new research report, “From Agentic Risk to Human Wins: Building a Culture of Security in the Era of Agentic AI.” The findings expose a dangerous reality for modern organisations in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia: autonomous AI tools are expanding the corporate attack surface faster than security teams can implement guardrails.

With agentic AI now widely embedded in day-to-day work, 84% of cybersecurity leaders in the UAE & Saudi Arabia report that AI agents are already taking actions within organisational workflows. However, a lack of governance is leaving organisations exposed; the report shows that around 1 in every 4 organisations (24%) report their use of AI is unapproved or ungoverned. This unmanaged “Shadow AI” effectively operates as an invisible layer of shadow employees handling sensitive organisational data without oversight.

Key Findings from the Report:

  • 88% of employees in the UAE & Saudi Arabia say that deepfake voice and video content is now so realistic it is impossible to know what to trust and 52% openly admit they could be tricked by a deepfake scam at work.
  • More than half (54%) of cybersecurity leaders in the UAE & Saudi Arabia report that mistakes during everyday work have had the greatest impact on their organisation’s cybersecurity in the past 12 months. Compounding this, 44% of employees acknowledge that time pressures and workplace distractions actively drive them to make critical security mistakes, even when they know the safe protocol.
  • 36% of cybersecurity leaders in the UAE & Saudi Arabia identify AI-enabled attacks as a key driver of future human-related cybersecurity risks.
  • 41% of employees reported that they commonly source their own agentic AI tools where options are unavailable or restrictive, leaving organisations vulnerable to cyberattacks. Concurrently, 52% of cybersecurity leaders report that the use of unsanctioned software and AI apps has actively impacted their security posture over the past 12 months.
  • Although 76% of security leaders feel “very well prepared” to handle unexpected or emerging AI-driven threats over the next year, 84% of them confirmed that improvements are still needed to ensure AI tools and agents operate within organization’s security policies and approved risk limits.

The report shows that organisations making progress are those who prioritise cybersecurity as a culture over a mere function, seamlessly incorporating secure behaviours into daily work. These organisations are creating environments where employees feel safe reporting mistakes, with 82% of employees agreeing.

“Cybersecurity has entered a volatile phase where organisations are trying to secure a hybrid human and AI workforce that’s changing more quickly than security leaders can keep up,” said Dr. Martin Kraemer, CISO Advisor at KnowBe4. “Attackers are moving at machine speed, using attacks such as deepfakes to target employees and prompt injections to hijack AI agents. Leaving almost a quarter of your corporate AI usage ungoverned is a massive open invitation to threat actors.”

The “From Agentic Risk to Human Wins: Building a Culture of Security in the Era of Agentic AI” report concludes that achieving “Wins” requires organisations to design systems that guide behaviour, build supportive cultures, and shift from tracking failures to reinforcing positive actions, and extending a security-first mindset across both AI agents and humans.

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Cequence Platform 9.0 Puts an AI Security Expert in Every Team’s Hands

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1 day ago

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July 2, 2026

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Cequence Security, the leader in application, API, and agentic AI protection, today announced general availability of Cequence Platform 9.0, an AI-native release that fundamentally changes how users interact with API security tools. Platform 9.0 ships with a built-in AI Assistant, an open Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that exposes every platform capability to an organization’s agents or automation workflows, a compliance-ready risk rules library mapped to 25 global regulatory frameworks, and a re-architected API security engine built to handle the largest enterprise API estates without performance degradation.

Agentic AI is transforming how enterprises interact with their customers, and internal IT teams are adopting AI agents faster than their security tools can keep up. Unlike vendors that add a simple chatbot to their existing product, Cequence took the opposite approach; the entire platform is AI-native and open, enabling customers to use Cequence’s built-in model or one of their choosing. With Platform 9.0, any practitioner can open a conversation and start asking the questions they actually care about, without knowing the interface, navigating menus, or understanding how the product works. The platform finds the answers. Teams with sophisticated AI workflows can use their own agents to directly drive these same capabilities through the open MCP architecture, without the need for custom integration.

Ameya Talwalkar, CEO and Co-Founder at Cequence, said: “Most vendors looked at the agentic era and added a chatbot. We looked at it and rebuilt the architecture. Cequence Platform 9.0 exposes the entire Cequence platform through an open MCP architecture so any agent can operate it directly, whether through our built-in AI Assistant, or a customer’s own agent. That is what AI-native actually means: the UI becomes optional. We are building for the way the agentic enterprise already works, while making sure a human approves every change along the way.”

AI-Native Platform with a Built-In AI Assistant

Cequence Platform 9.0 ships with a built-in AI Assistant that answers plain-language questions such as “What is my biggest risk right now?” with ranked, evidence-backed findings drawn from live platform data. Unlike most security chatbots that only deliver value in the hands of experienced practitioners, the Cequence AI Assistant arrives with skills built on years of application, API, and data protection work in high-traffic enterprise environments, able to guide practitioners of all skill levels from day one.

Agent capabilities in Platform 9.0 include:

  • Drive valuable actions from simple conversations: use plain-English to easily and quickly drive results. Have the AI Assistant classify APIs, identify risks, draft rules, and create reports, all without navigating the UI.
  • Open MCP server: any MCP-capable agent, SOAR platform, or automation workflow can interact with, configure, and pull insights from the platform through an open API contract, with no custom integration, incorporating API security into broader agentic workflows
  • Human in the loop: read actions run freely; every proposed write shows the exact change and requires explicit human approval before anything happens
  • Full transparency: every answer exposes the AI Assistant’s reasoning and the underlying tool calls; when it lacks a tool for a task, it says so rather than guessing

Shreyans Mehta, CTO and Co-Founder at Cequence, said: “Most security chatbots are only as useful as the person asking the questions, which means they fall flat in the hands of anyone who is not already an expert. We built the Platform 9.0 agent differently. It runs a full agentic loop, planning which tools answer the question, calling them, and synthesizing ranked, evidence-backed recommendations while showing you exactly how it got there. When it does not have the tool to do something, it tells you instead of guessing. That governance-first design is not an afterthought. It is the same conviction behind the Cequence AI Gateway, and it is what makes this safe to put in front of any practitioner from the start.”

Compliance-Ready Risk Rules and Compliance Packages

Compliance is the most common forcing function for an API security purchase, and the most common place programs stall. Platform 9.0 ships the rules, frameworks, and reports to make customers audit-ready immediately, with no professional services and no custom rule development required.

Compliance capabilities in Platform 9.0 include:

  • 250+ pre-built risk rules: Mapped to 25 global compliance frameworks including OWASP API Security Top 10 (all versions), PCI DSS, GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST CSF, DORA, NIS2, LGPD, SAMA, MAS TRM, and additional regional frameworks across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC
  • One-click audit-ready reports: each report builds from live data, maps findings to the framework’s specific controls, scores risk by control area, and provides remediation guidance for every gap; reports can be company or partner branded
  • Observe mode: see how proposed rules perform for testing purposes without raising formal issues, allowing teams can add frameworks without a flood of unreviewed findings
  • Test panel: validates any rule against sample request and response data before activation

Re-Architected API Security Engine Built for Enterprise Scale

Agentic AI is accelerating API endpoint growth faster than any prior technology wave. Platform 9.0 includes a complete rebuild of the engine that discovers, catalogs, and scores risk across an organization’s API estate, delivering higher performance at a smaller CPU footprint.

API security engine improvements in Platform 9.0 include:

  • 50x increase in API endpoints supported: with sub-five-second page load times across every view regardless of endpoint count
  • Reduced compute costs: dramatic CPU footprint improvements translate directly into lower infrastructure costs, especially for on-premises deployments
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Magna AI and Saudi Xerox Establish Strategic Framework to Advance Sovereign AI Infrastructure Across Saudi Arabia

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1 day ago

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July 2, 2026

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Magna AI, Inc., the global integrated‑value‑chain sovereign AI transformation leader established through a partnership between Trend Micro and Wistron Digital Technology Holding Company (WDH), powered by NVIDIA, today announced a strategic collaboration with Saudi Xerox, official representation of Xerox Trading Company in Saudi Arabia that is redefining the workplace experience by providing solutions to improve business processes, automation, and printing technology. The initiative was formalized during the Global AI Show 2026 in Riyadh by Dr. Moataz BinAli, Chief Executive Officer of Magna AI, and Mehmet Sezer, General Manager of Saudi Xerox.

The strategic framework will enable both companies to advance AI data centres, sovereign AI Factory capabilities, secure AI platforms and large-scale AI adoption for both government-led national initiatives and enterprise customers. The collaboration is aligned with Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation agenda and Vision 2030 objectives, with a focus on enabling secure, scalable, and locally relevant AI adoption across the public and private sectors.

The collaboration comes amid rapid expansion of the Kingdom’s AI infrastructure sector. Saudi Arabia’s AI data center market is forecast to grow from USD 0.63 billion in 2025 to USD 1.74 billion by 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate of over 22%, according to Mordor Intelligence. This growth is driven by Vision 2030 digital investment, government data-sovereignty mandates, and rising demand for locally hosted AI workloads.

“Saudi Arabia is building one of the most ambitious national AI agendas in the world, and that requires infrastructure with governance and security built in, shaped around the organization’s own requirements rather than a vendor’s defaults which creates the conditions for genuine long-term control,” said Dr. Moataz BinAli, Chief Executive Officer, Magna AI. “By combining Magna’s full value-chain AI Factory capabilities with Saudi Xerox deep on-ground presence in the Kingdom, we can help government and enterprise organizations move from AI ambition to AI at scale on infrastructure they own and control. This alliance also reflects our commitment to working with local partners to build the AI capacity, resilience, and ecosystem required to support long-term national transformation.”

Under the agreement, Magna AI will drive AI Factory architecture, platform development, AI security, and governance frameworks, while Saudi Xerox will support local infrastructure integration, security operations, compliance alignment and on-ground execution across the Kingdom.

The two companies intend to collaborate across several areas, including sovereign AI Factory development for large-scale model training, fine-tuning, inference, agentic AI operations, and data pipelines; secure AI operations aligned with Saudi data-residency and cybersecurity requirements; sector-specific AI applications for government and enterprise; and AI skills development and capacity building.

“Saudi Xerox is committed to supporting the Kingdom’s digital transformation through advanced IT, cloud, managed services, and cybersecurity capabilities,” said Mehmet Sezer, General Manager, Saudi Xerox. “This joint effort brings together Magna’s AI platform and security expertise with our established services and execution capabilities in Saudi Arabia, enabling national institutions and enterprises to adopt advanced AI with confidence and in line with local regulatory requirements. Our aim is to help organizations to adopt AI in a secure, compliant, and practical way that supports measurable business and national outcomes.”

Magna AI is the Title Sponsor of the Global AI Show 2026. Throughout the two-day event, Magna AI is showcasing is its sovereign AI infrastructure and enterprise AI platforms, as well as it’s security and industry-focused solutions. Magna AI leaders are also offering perspectives to organizations across industries looking to build production-ready AI that delivers measurable business outcomes. 

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