100% of IT security leaders in India see AI agents as promising, while 85% say current security practices need change, according to Salesforce’s latest ‘State of IT: Security survey.’
The global study surveyed over 2,000 enterprise IT security leaders, including 100 in India, and highlighted key implementation concerns. Nearly half (49%) of Indian respondents said their data foundations are not yet ready to fully utilise the potential of agentic AI. Additionally, 52% expressed a lack of full confidence in the presence of proper guardrails to support the secure deployment of AI agents.
Deepak Pargaonkar, Vice President of Solution Engineering, Salesforce India, said, “While IT security leaders in India recognise the benefits that AI agents can bring, many also acknowledged significant readiness gaps in implementing effective safeguards. To truly augment security capabilities with AI agents, organisations must prioritise trusted data, robust governance frameworks, and stringent compliance measures – ensuring data protection and regulatory adherence every step of the way.”
The report found that as security concerns evolve beyond traditional threats like malware and cloud breaches, Indian security leaders are also worried about data poisoning — a threat where attackers tamper with AI training datasets. As a result, 83% of organisations in India plan to increase their security budgets over the next year to address these risks and improve resilience.
Use of AI agents in daily operations is also expected to rise significantly. Currently, 43% of IT security teams in India are already using agents, and this figure is projected to grow to 76% within two years. These AI systems are seen as valuable tools for tasks ranging from threat detection to auditing AI model performance, offering potential to reduce manual workloads and allow teams to focus on more complex problem-solving tasks.
While 81% of Indian security leaders see AI agents as useful for improving compliance with global privacy regulations, 87% believe that these tools also bring compliance challenges. The increasing complexity of regulatory environments across different industries and regions makes compliance harder, especially as many organisations still rely on manual, error-prone processes.
Just 55% of IT security leaders in India feel fully confident that they can deploy AI agents in a way that meets all relevant regulations and standards, while 84% admitted that they have not yet fully automated their compliance systems.
Trust continues to be a major issue in successful AI adoption. Nearly half (48%) of Indian security leaders said they are unsure whether they have high-quality data to support AI, or whether their organisations have the right permissions, policies and safeguards in place to use AI agents responsibly.
