Outtake Labs and Cybersecurity Insiders survey 900+ enterprise leaders in the first industry benchmark on digital risk maturity – and the results are a wake-up call.
Outtake, the next-gen digital risk platform, released the 2026 State of Digital Risk Report, produced in partnership with Cybersecurity Insiders. Drawing on survey data from 900+ enterprise security, fraud, and risk leaders, it is the first comprehensive benchmark of how organizations detect, investigate, and respond to digital risk. The report also uncovered how far current programs fall short of the threat.
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The findings are clear: 84% of organizations experienced material digital risk incidents in the past year, yet only 7% describe their program as “leading.” Nearly seven in ten describe themselves as unaware, reactive, or still developing. The most common answer for who owns digital risk is no one, ranking above security operations, fraud, legal, and every other function combined. At every stage of the threat lifecycle: detection, investigation, response, and measurement, more than 60% of organizations are operating without adequate capability.
The costs are real and already in the budget. Manual remediation is the top cost category (53%), ahead of direct fraud loss. Customer support burden, diverted executive time, legal fees, and rising insurance premiums follow. These are not security metrics. They are P&L events, and most CFOs can’t see them because they don’t sit in the right line item.
“We partnered with Cybersecurity Insiders to measure the gap in digital risk that leaders talk about every day but rarely quantify. What came back surprised us at almost every level. Digital risk is already functioning as a board-level business risk. The governance, accountability structures, and purpose-built infrastructure to manage it at that level haven’t arrived yet. This is the problem we are actively solving for some of the most recognizable brands in the world.” — Alex Dhillon, Founder & CEO, Outtake
Key Findings for CISOs and CIOs
- Enterprises have deployed AI agents they cannot stop, into a threat environment built to exploit them. 96% of organizations have no automated way to stop a hijacked AI agent, while 44% say AI-generated attacks are already indistinguishable from legitimate activity. Detection isn’t the bottleneck. Containment is. We call this the AI Trust Gap.
- Your people are the primary target. Your program wasn’t built for that. 53% of organizations had an executive or employee impersonated in the past year. Yet 43% have no capability to build a threat profile around someone actively being targeted, and only 16% have formal protection covering most or all employees.
- Detection is reactive. Investigation stops at the artifact. At every stage of the threat lifecycle, more than 60% of organizations are operating without adequate capability. The most common way brand impersonation is discovered is customers reporting it, and just 5% ever trace it back to a full campaign.
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