One cybersecurity firm’s three-month data shows rising AI adoption in its user base — along with concomitant increases in “shadow AI” usage

Based on its own internal incident and user base metrics for Mar to May 2025, a cybersecurity firm has released some data trends on customers’ adoption of AI to the media, particularly where unsanctioned AI applications or uses were detected.

First, adoption of “foundational AI infrastructure tools” such as generative AI (GenAI) tools, had increased by 50% among the firm’s observed user base over the same period in 2024. Traffic volumes showing network activity tied to such platforms had increased by 73%. Within the sample, 41% of users organizations in the data samples were found to have used at least one GenAI platform.

Second, usage data for on-premises AI tools — specifically large language model (LLM) interfaces —showed that 34% of the firm’s user ecosystem within the sample used these systems.

Other findings

Third, the user base data showed that GitHub Copilot was used by 39% of the user base data analyzed. In addition, 5.5% of the data showed users running AI agents generated from popular frameworks on their premises. Also:

  • 66% of organizations in the data had users making API calls to api.openai.com, while 13% made calls to api.anthropic.com during the period examined.
  • More than 1,550 distinct GenAI SaaS applications, up from 317 in the firm’s February data, were being released and adopted throughout the enterprises tracked by the firm.
  • General-purpose chatbot ChatGPT saw its first decrease in enterprise popularity since the firm began tracking popular GenAI app usage in 2023. All other GenAI platforms in the data showed increases. 

According to Ray Canzanese, Director, Netskope Threat Labs, the firm releasing its three-month data analysis: “The rapid growth of shadow AI places the onus on organizations to identify who is creating new AI apps and AI agents using GenAI platforms, and where they are building and deploying them. Security teams don’t want to hamper employee end users’ innovation aspirations, but AI usage is only going to increase. To safeguard this innovation, organizations need to overhaul their AI app controls and evolve their data loss protection policies to incorporate real-time user coaching elements.”