Veeam Software unveiled a new Data and AI Trust Maturity Model designed to enable organizations to assess their readiness to securely govern and expand their artificial intelligence initiatives. Revealed at VeeamON NYC 2026, the structure responds to the increasing need to mitigate the risks connected to AI governance, operational responsibility, and trust as business adopt autonomous AI systems.
Company research with 300+ senior business and technology executives found that the gap between AI adoption and organizations’ readiness to deliver is widening. Although 80% of leaders said they believe they can safely scale AI, only approximately 33% said they could supply complete audit-ready documentation to regulators, boards, or other third parties.
“AI confidence is high, but confidence alone does not scale,” said Anand Eswaran, CEO at Veeam. “Our research shows that while most organizations believe they are ready to scale AI safely and responsibly, many struggle to demonstrate that readiness in a board, audit, or regulatory context. The Data and AI Trust Maturity Model provides leaders with a clear, objective way to understand where they truly stand, identify execution gaps, and prioritize the capabilities required to operationalize AI trust, not just aspire to it. This is critical in an agentic world.”
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The maturity model assesses organizations along 12 operational and governance dimensions, and can be used to rate the organization either based on five levels of maturity: from ad hoc processes and unintegrated use of AI technologies, to moderate, advanced and leadership levels of maturity, or to a cluster of characteristics in the model’s maturity or ‘band’. It assesses four key pillars, which are understanding of AI/data assets, securing of systems and identities, backup and recovery for resilience, and trusted AI enabling.
Veeam’s report revealed operational barriers to AI development, like a lack of AI and machine learning skills, integration issues, a lack of clarity over regulations, and poor quality of data.
More than half of the organizations polled reported delaying or scaling back AI initiatives over the last 18 months. This tool will be rolled out worldwide to all organizations, later this year, providing benchmarking, roadmaps and best practices for AI trust and accountability.