AI has crossed the threshold from experimentation to enterprise standard, and security leaders believe they have it under control. The data suggests otherwise with 90% of organizations claiming full visibility into their AI footprint, while 59% simultaneously confirm shadow AI is present and ungoverned. If you can see it, why can't you control it?

The Purple Book Community surveyed 650+ senior cybersecurity leaders across seven industries and two continents. The leaders in this survey are not junior practitioners or early-career managers. They are CISOs, VPs, Directors, and Security Architects with direct operational responsibility for enterprise security programs. What they believe about their AI governance posture matters, and so does what the data reveals about the gap between that belief and operational reality.

What emerged is a portrait of confident governance layered over persistent, structural blind spots: a pattern we call "The Confidence Gap."