From Governance to Resilience: What’s Next for AI, DSPM, and Multi-Cloud Protection

At AvePoint Innovates Q4, our team came together to share the latest innovations shaping how organizations govern, secure, and scale in today’s rapidly changing digital landscape. From agentic AI to data security posture management (DSPM) and expanded multi-cloud coverage, one theme was clear: governance, security, and resilience are no longer separate conversations – they are deeply connected. 

Why Governance Matters More Than Ever

AI is reshaping how we work, but without governance, its power can quickly turn into risk. Gartner predicts that by 2028, 15% of daily work decisions will be made by AI agents – up from virtually none today. That scape of adoption is unprecedented, and it means decisions once made by people will increasingly be automated, often with little visibility into how they’re reached.

That shift accelerates long-standing challenges like sprawl, overexposure, and data loss. These risks aren’t new, but AI magnifies them, shrinking the window organizations have to respond. Left unchecked, automation can turn minor oversights into widespread issues in days rather than months. 

The takeaway? Governance has to be built in from the start. It provides the accountability and guardrails to ensure AI decisions, security models, and collaboration tools drive business value instead of new vulnerabilities. 

Agentic AI: Smarter, Scalable Governance

AI agents and copilots are quickly moving from experimental tools to business-critical systems. While they unlock speed and creativity, they also raise difficult questions: Who is accountable for the decisions an agent makes? How do you ensure sensitive data isn’t mishandled when AI tools are embedded into daily workflows? Traditional governance models weren’t designed for this pace or complexity, which is why organizations need more intelligent, adaptive approaches that evolve in real time.

AvePoint is embedding AI directly into the flow of work to turn governance into an intelligent, automated process: 

• Automated Ownership Identification: AI-driven assignment of best owner ensures accountability lands with the right person – reducing blind spots and manual overhead.
• Prescriptive Policy Creation (Beta Program): AI pulls from relevant regulations and standards to generate content retention and disposal policies in minutes, not years.
• Smart Terms Using Zero-Shot AI (Beta Program): Classify and label content without the heavy lift of training data, while retaining transparency and user validation.
• Copilot Studio Agent Dashboard: Gain visibility into agent creation, usage, and engagement to ensure adoption aligns with business goals.  

Together, these capabilities close one of the biggest governance gaps: tying automation, accountability, and accuracy directly to daily collaboration. 

DSPM: Strengthening Data Security in the Age of AI

Security teams have long worried about sensitive data being overshared or stored in the wrong place. The difference now is scale. Generative AI tools rely on vast amounts of unstructured data – documents, chats, emails – that rarely sit inside traditional controls. This makes visibility a constant challenge and increases the likelihood of accidental exposure. DSPM is emerging as the strategy that closes these gaps, giving organizations not just alerts but actionable steps to strengthen protection.

AI is supercharging information sprawl, and with it, the need for proactive data protection. That’s where DSPM with AvePoint comes in, built around three pillars: 

• Unified Visibility. Command Centers surface actionable insights into governance maturity, risk posture, and AI readiness. New additions like the Operational Efficiency Command Center now make it possible to measure governance outcomes – from remediation speeds to ROI – and connect governance activity directly to business value.
• Governance Everywhere. Apply the same policies consistently across modern and legacy platforms – this quarter we are expanding coverage across Microsoft Loop and hybrid Exchange.
• Proactive Protection. Automatically apply sensitivity labels and track remediation outcomes, so regulated data is protected from the start.  

Together, these enhancements ensure your security and governance strategy doesn’t just mitigate risk — it continuously demonstrates impact and scales confidently with your business.

Multi-SaaS and Multi-Cloud: Resilience Without Boundaries

The days of working in a single collaboration suite are over. Most employees now touch multiple platforms daily – from Microsoft Teams to Google Drive to industry-specific SaaS apps. This flexibility boosts productivity but also creates fragmentation, with policies enforced unevenly and risks overlooked. A multi-SaaS and multi-cloud approach ensures governance and protection keep pace with how people actually work, providing consistency across all environments rather than isolated, one-off fixes.

Organizations use Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, Monday.com, Confluence, GitHub, and more – and they need governance that follows them everywhere.

AvePoint is expanding coverage across leading SaaS platforms, offering: 

• Consistent protection, wherever work lives. Starting this month, you can join our private preview to see how we’re providing data protection capabilities across of some of the most utilized platforms.  
• Enhanced administrative capabilities within backup systems. New File Preview lets admins and compliance officers securely view backed-up content without a full restore.
• Simplified licensing and deployment. New protected capacity licensing makes infrastructure backup more predictable and cost-effective, while CAP Gateway enhancements let you run backup compute within your own Azure, AWS, or GCP. Plus, you can now back up and restore Google VMs.
• Migration flexibility. Move data between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace – or both – while preserving fidelity and compliance.
• Active Directory device migrations. Join the private preview by testing Active Directory device migrations — enabling IT teams to securely move, modernize, and stay compliant as environments evolve.
• Confidence Platform for Google Workspace. Extend your proven Microsoft 365 governance model to Google Workspace — bringing consistent policy enforcement (in preview), lifecycle management, and secure collaboration across clouds. 

The principle is simple: your governance model should travel with your business, not stay locked in one platform. 

The Road Ahead

As AI, compliance, and multi-cloud collaboration continue to converge, the path forward is clear: connected strategies will win. Siloed efforts – a security tool here, a governance policy there – can’t keep up with the pace of change. The organizations that thrive will be those that see governance, security, and resilience as part of the same fabric, enabling them to adapt faster and build long-term trust.

The pace of change in AI and cloud collaboration isn’t slowing down. With the AvePoint Confidence Platform, you can: 

• Govern smarter with agentic AI.
• Secure data with measurable outcomes through DSPM.
• Protect collaboration everywhere with multi-cloud resilience. 

As we continue to innovate, your feedback plays a critical role. Join our ongoing customer focus groups, AvePoint Innovates Feedback Forums, participate in private previews, or connect with us at Microsoft Ignite to shape the future of governance and resilience.

Because true data protection in the AI era isn’t about silos; it’s about bringing governance, security, and resilience together.