Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Blake Brannon, Chief Innovation Officer, OneTrust
AI is reshaping how organizations operate, govern, and grow. The technology is moving into every product, every workflow, and every decision. Its potential is extraordinary, but it brings new, critical responsibilities that reach every corner of business.
In 2026, governance teams will continue to navigate the operational impact of AI ubiquity. Governance models will be tested by continuous agent activity, non-deterministic behavior, and a scale that exceeds human oversight. What once felt manageable through policy and review cycles will strain under the weight of systems that act, adapt, and evolve in real time.
Navigating the challenge of scale
IDC predicts there will be roughly 1.3 billion AI agents operating across enterprises by 2028. With only about 400 million knowledge workers in the world today, organizations will effectively be managing a workforce that is more than 300 percent larger than what their systems were designed to support.
In the year ahead, organizations will abandon the idea that each AI agent needs bespoke governance. It’s time to embrace a much more scalable approach. For example, pattern-based policy governance allows teams to categorize agent behavior, apply governing principles once, and allow decisions to auto-approve when those patterns repeat. This will become the reality of governing the agent workforce and preventing data misuse without slowing down innovation.
Navigating the challenge of speed
The gap between how fast technology moves and how governance operates is no longer theoretical. Governance processes are often still rooted in human committees and point-in-time reviews that were designed to evaluate just a few major projects a year. That approach will fundamentally fall apart when there are more agents than people, and when those agents create orders of magnitude, more data uses almost instantaneously when given a business goal to achieve. In 2026, leaders will recognize that governance cannot operate at human speed in a machine-speed environment.
Navigating the challenge of context
Humans instinctively know when actions cross ethical lines. AI doesn’t. In 2026, organizations will navigate a critical element of AI governance, shifting their focus from technical errors like hallucinations and security flaws to the deeper problem of permissive use. As agents are unleashed across the organization, they may be making decisions that are technically correct but harmful in their outcome. How do you scale human judgment into a governance layer that translates ethics, privacy, and compliance into a machine-readable agent control plane? Agents must be able to evaluate context, intent, and risk in real time.
The road ahead
To get governance AI-ready, there needs to be a fundamental change in how every organization operates. Beyond speeding up processes or adding automation, it’s about rethinking governance entirely so it can work at machine speed and keep up with the velocity of AI. It will require collaboration across privacy, risk, data, and AI teams that historically operated in silos. Continuous monitoring, pattern-based approvals, and programmatic enforcement will need to be built into daily operations.
Governance leaders are facing a defining moment. Teams that frame governance as enablement will align governance priorities with the most critical data initiatives and reinforce ROI. Language will matter-governance teams evolve from “project blockers” to “data enablers.” Credibility will matter, too-governance leaders should be able to speak the same language as the teams building it.
Governance is evolving from static reviews to dynamic systems built into the flow of work. The future belongs to the teams that design governance as infrastructure, not administration.
The road ahead demands readiness at every level, from policy to product, from people to process. The organizations that thrive will turn governance into momentum. Welcome to the age of AI. Buckle up.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Blake Brannon is Chief Innovation Officer at OneTrust, the AI-Ready Governance Platform�. He leads a team focused on emerging technologies and strategic partnerships to help global organizations drive innovation through the responsible use of data and AI. Previously, Brannon served as OneTrust’s Chief Product & Strategy Officer, where he was pivotal in scaling the company�s leading platform and inventing core privacy, data governance, and AI governance technologies, contributing to more than 350 granted patents.
