With AI now taking a central role in businesses across all industry sectors, making sure your organization is able to truly benefit and grow from the technology is key.

However the growth in AI usage has also seen a rise in threats against businesses – from hackers using their own AI tools to develop and create more advanced malware strains, to regulatory concerns over the avalanche of unstructured data generated on a daily basis.

“There is no AI without data security”

“We live in an age where regardless of how regulated your industry is, data is your business model…it doesn’t matter which industry you belong to, data is your lifeblood – and resiliency posture matters,” Eswaran tells me.

In an unsurprisingly buoyant mood following its recent acquisition of Securiti AI for $1.725 billion, Eswaran outlines how Veeam realized how there is “a real struggle” for companies looking for the best use of AI.

The technology is transforming businesses, but often they are using different tools to understand, secure, and govern the data. If something goes wrong, more different tools are used – which when 90% of data is unstructured, can pose issues – as the data feeding AI pipelines is not trusted and doesn’t have the right degree of controls or policy permissions, leading to project failure.

“We are the only company which essentially looks at data across the entire life cycle, primary and backup and AI pipelines – the creation of data all the way through to AI pipelines,” Eswaran notes.

He highlights a recent conversation with a customer who pointed out how, “there is no AI without data security, and there is no trust in AI without data resilience – and that is exactly what we set out to accomplish”.

“If you don’t keep up with the pace of what you need to do to leverage AI, your industry is going to be disrupted, your company is going to be disrupted, and bad actors are going to get in really fast,” he adds.

Veeam’s goal then, Eswaran says, is to provide the first unified platform, bringing data security controls, privacy governance, and data resilience together, “to make sure that every AI project for every company can be successful.”

“We are looking at this as the entire life cycle of data, and what we need to do at every single step to make sure you’re not only safe and secure and resilient, and leveraging the power of data for AI – you’re compliant.”

“In the age of AI, every company has a responsibility to make sure you’re guiding your customers the right way,” Eswaran adds, “and helping customers along the journey will put them on a path.”

“Companies and leaders are starting to realize the real problem of AI project failure is actually data security and reliance, resilience coming together,” he notes, “and what makes it harder is that it’s not just fragmented tools, it’s the people inside the company looking at it are actually different.”

“Larger companies are starting to realize data security is the only way you can create some degree of certainty around AI project success…and if you don’t keep up with the pace of what you need to do to leverage AI, your industry is going to be disrupted, your company is going to be disrupted, and bad actors are going to get in really fast – you’ll be surrounded from all sides.”

“This is why a unified platform around security resilience coming together is critical – be aware of it, be aware of the road map, and what you need to do to get on the right path…you don’t have the luxury of going slow to get this right.”

“Magical” AI – but for how long?

Looking forward, then, it seems Veeam is clearly in a strong position to maximize its role as the overseer and protector of data across the whole AI pipeline – but I ask Eswaran, is there a risk of AI taking over workplaces too much?

“Our company uses AI across almost every function and workflow,” he says, “and it’s magical…and it is not at the expense of stepping away, as the humans are still in the mix – all it has done is made us more productive, almost by accident, it’s like I’ve scaled the organization, and allowed us to accelerate growth, accelerate profitability, and become even more relevant for our customers.”

“People talk about 90% of AI projects failing – but a project failing is a better outcome than a project succeeding with poisoned, hallucinated data – because that’s dangerous.”

“I think we’ve asked this question (about AI) at every inflection point in humanity – when we talked about basic laptops, we asked this question when we talked about the internet, and to mobile – and at every instance, we said this is really big, but every one of those inflection points turned out to be much bigger than we thought it would be.”

“One way to look at AI is to think – wow, 90% of projects are failing, and this is just a bubble – but the other way to look at it is, 10% are succeeding, this early in the game, and the impact when companies get it right is massive!”

“I think every company needs to take a step back, not get caught in the hype, and go down to precision use cases…and the companies which get it right early, will be the big winners for their industries.”

“That’s what we’re here to do – we are here to remove the fear and fundamental blockers of how AI can be unleashed with unifying data security, all the controls, data resilience, coming together, so companies can worry about unleashing AI and not worry about anything else.”

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Mike Moore is Deputy Editor at TechRadar Pro. He has worked as a B2B and B2C tech journalist for nearly a decade, including at one of the UK’s leading national newspapers and fellow Future title ITProPortal, and when he’s not keeping track of all the latest enterprise and workplace trends, can most likely be found watching, following or taking part in some kind of sport.