AI Data Exposure Impacts 1 in 6 Supply Chain Professionals, Survey Reveals

1 in 6 supply chain professionals report AI-related data exposure, survey finds

One in six supply chain, logistics, distribution and wholesale professionals said their company experienced an incident in the past year in which an artificial intelligence tool exposed, shared or allowed incorrect access to supplier or customer information.

The finding comes from a survey of 250 managers and executives conducted by InstaLILY, a provider of business AI agents for distribution. The survey was fielded through Pollfish beginning Oct. 9, 2026, and included respondents whose companies use AI in their daily operations.

The results highlight a growing concern for trucking companies and other businesses that handle information from multiple parties in the same transaction. AI tools are increasingly being connected to pricing records, contracts, customer accounts, supplier information and other commercially sensitive systems.

According to the survey, 78% of respondents said their company’s AI tools could access customer pricing and margins. Another 67% said those tools could access supplier pricing and rebate information.

For carriers, brokers, 3PLs and shippers, improper access to that information could affect more than one company. An AI system that places one customer’s contract price on another customer’s quote, displays a supplier’s bid to a competitor or reveals the carrier rate behind a broker’s margin could expose business terms that were expected to remain confidential.

That makes an AI decision an information-security decision as well. A logistics company selecting an AI tool is not only deciding how its employees will use the software; it is also deciding how the system will handle information entrusted to the company by customers, carriers and suppliers.

Questions from trading partners are already influencing those choices. Sixty-three percent of respondents said their employer had been asked by a supplier or customer how it protects their information. For 30% of respondents, such an inquiry affected a decision involving a software provider, vendor or AI tool.

Respondents generally placed the greatest responsibility for a data exposure on their own company. Fifty-one percent said their company would bear the most responsibility, compared with 23% who pointed to the software or AI vendor.

That distinction is important for transportation businesses. Even when a third-party platform is involved, the company using the tool may still be expected to control employee access, determine what information is connected to the system and verify that the system does not combine data improperly.

The survey found a gap between confidence in AI safeguards and the way data is organized across business systems. Sixty-three percent of respondents reported at least some overlap between supplier and customer data across their company’s platforms, including AI tools. At the same time, 87% said they were very or somewhat confident that their AI tools kept supplier and customer information appropriately separated.

InstaLILY said the results give companies reason to test AI systems throughout an entire task, from the records the tool retrieves to the answer or action it produces. For a transportation operation, that could include checking whether an AI system can prepare a customer quote without pulling in another customer’s pricing, supplier contract terms or a carrier’s confidential rate.

The most commonly cited obstacle to separating supplier and customer information was that existing AI tools were not designed for that requirement, identified by 22% of respondents. Cost was cited by 21%, while 20% pointed to a lack of technical expertise.

Even so, the survey indicated that data separation is becoming a significant technology requirement. Ninety-two percent of respondents said separating supplier and customer information was a high or moderate priority for their company over the next year. Nine in 10 said their employer would be more likely to select an AI tool designed specifically for distribution and supply chain operations if it offered stronger controls over that data.

For professional drivers, the issue may be most visible when AI-supported systems affect quoting, dispatch, customer communication or shipment records. A tool that handles those functions may draw information from several parts of a company’s operation. The survey’s findings suggest businesses will need to understand which records an AI system can access and how it keeps information separated before relying on its output.

InstaLILY also cited broader concerns about AI security. IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach report found that 13% of surveyed organizations had experienced a breach involving AI models or applications. Among those organizations, 97% reported lacking proper AI access controls. IBM also found that breaches involving unauthorized AI tools, sometimes called “shadow AI,” added an average of $670,000 to breach costs.

InstaLILY defined an incident as supplier or customer data being exposed, shared or accessed incorrectly through an AI tool. The survey results are based on respondents’ reported knowledge and experiences and were not independently verified. The survey also did not measure the severity of the incidents, so it does not distinguish between minor internal mistakes and more serious exposures.

Adam Isenberg, InstaLILY’s head of distribution, said companies should require vendors to demonstrate that their systems can keep one customer’s contract pricing from appearing on another customer’s quote. The company’s recommendations include testing AI tools against routine business scenarios and establishing when human approval is required before an AI system acts on confidential information.