When a database security incident happens, everyone turns to the security team. We look for a simple root cause analysis, and then we add a control, tighten a policy, and maybe even buy a silver bullet tool. We feel progress!

But the incident didn’t start there.

It started years earlier, when the organization made a series of perfectly reasonable decisions that quietly expanded the surface area and weakened the consistency of control. “Let’s add a new platform for this workload”, “Let’s move this bit to the cloud” or even “let’s introduce AI to speed up the boring bits”.

None of these are security decisions, but together they increase the potential for security failures.

Complexity is the enemy

The 2026 State of the Database Landscape report ('State of' here on)  shows that 84% of organizations now use two or more database platforms and 43% run hybrid.

This is entirely rational. Different workloads, different teams, different constraints. But every extra platform and integration seam adds another:

• Identity/permissions model
• Monitoring surface
• Deployment path
• “Who owns this?” gap

It’s those seams where incidents are born.

AI turns the dial up

AI adoption in database work has jumped 15% to 44% in a year. AI helps people move faster, drafting changes, automating scripts, optimizing queries and doing more work with fewer specialists.

But AI also increases the rate of change and the number of people touching data. If your foundations are inconsistent, then AI will find the inconsistencies and create problems.

You already know this! We see from the Redgate 'State of' report that data security/privacy is the number one concern around AI, and nearly 60% of folks accept a higher security risk as a trade-off for efficiency.

What to do about database security?

You can reduce incidents by treating consistency as a security strategy.

• Create a “paved road” for database changes: deploy, observe, audit. The safe path should be the easy path.
• Standardize the control plane: Even if platforms differ, use the same layer of control (identity/access/monitoring baselines).
• Treat AI like a power tool: Use only approved tools with clear data-handling rules and guardrails (reviews, checks, traceability).
• Measure control: Can you answer “what changed? Who changed it? Where’s it running? What’s the risk?”.

Security incidents rarely start with a security failure. They start with dozens of reasonable decisions that nobody ever looked at together. The best investment most organisations can make is a consistent control plane that spans every platform, every deployment path, and every AI-assisted change. Fewer seams, clearer ownership, one way to answer, "what changed and who changed it?"

Security doesn't start in the security team, it starts wherever variation escapes your control plane.