Data security, privacy remain barriers to AI adoption

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine businesses are increasingly embracing AI to boost productivity, but concerns over data security and privacy continue to hamper further adoption.

A survey by Taiwan-based technology company Synology said that seven out of 10 respondents have cited data security and privacy among key challenges in AI adoption.

The survey also found that 90 percent of Philippine businesses see Al-ready infrastructure as an important component in improving productivity and workflow efficiency.

Synology noted that these findings suggest that Al’s effectiveness depends not only on the applications themselves but also on organizations’ ability to access, manage and secure the data that powers them across different systems.

The survey also indicated that organizations must address key data-management issues amid the expanded use of AI.

“As businesses expand their data infrastructure, they also need confidence that essential services can recover when disruption occurs,” Synology Philippines country manager Claire Huang said.

Claire Huang

The survey noted that nearly 47 percent of respondents expressed challenges in data quality and availability, while 40 percent reported that their data is scattered across different environments.

About 40 percent of surveyed respondents also said that they lack visibility into how information submitted to third-party AI tools are managed.

The survey also found that 72.4 percent of respondents were confident that they could recover from a ransomware attack using protected backups, while a quarter said they were very confident.

Meanwhile, 74 percent of businesses also stated that they favored on-premise or hybrid infrastructure, compared with the 9.9 percent who preferred the public cloud.

“AI creates value when it helps people do their work better and enables the business to respond more effectively to its customers,” Synology Southeast Asia head Antoine Yang said.

“Our focus is to help organizations sustain those gains as adoption grows, with data they can trust and a dependable path to recovery when disruption occurs,” he added.