• 100% of organizations have granted security or compliance exceptions to allow high-risk digital work to proceed despite acknowledged risks.
• 20% of organizations have canceled strategic initiatives, while 39% have delayed growth projects due to a lack of secure technology environments.

MCLEAN, Va., May 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — New research from Replica Cyber, a secure environments platform for high stakes work, reveals that businesses are universally trading security for speed when conducting business-critical, high-risk digital work, with every organization surveyed granting security exceptions to keep projects moving forward. The study findings also demonstrate that a lack of available, secure digital environments is slowing business growth.

Based on a survey of 200 U.S. cybersecurity leaders undertaken by independent research company, Opinion Matters, ‘Trading Safety for Speed: The Rise of the Exception Economy’ delivers clear evidence that the need for organizations to undertake high-risk digital work is expanding faster than infrastructure can keep pace. As a result, organizations are caught between business urgency and secure, compliant execution.

Key findings include:

• Exception culture is now standard operating procedure. 100% of organizations granted security or compliance exceptions in the past 12 months (63% formally, 33.5% through informal workarounds).
• Strategic initiatives are stalling, not just slowing. 39% of organizations delayed or canceled market expansion, product launches, M&A, or AI deployment because the work couldn’t be conducted securely. Twenty percent of high-risk work was canceled entirely.
• Confidence in protecting critical assets during high-risk work is virtually non-existent. Just one in three cybersecurity leaders feels confident their IP, identities, or infrastructure are adequately protected during high-risk work.

A Visibility Crisis at the Top

The research also reveals a disconnect between leadership perception and operational reality. While 20–27% of C-suite leaders believe secure environments are ready when needed, only 5.3% of VPs of Cybersecurity agree, suggesting that leadership may be unaware of the friction that forces teams into risky workarounds.

“The Exception Economy is a system under pressure,” said Kristopher Schroeder, CEO at Replica Cyber. “When 100% of organizations are granting security exceptions, they’re not choosing speed carelessly. They are responding to a structural problem that forces a choice between greater exposure, or stalled growth and missed opportunity.”

The report examines where high-risk work is happening, how it’s protected, and what’s slowing teams down. It finds organizations improvising across fragmented environments, delaying critical initiatives, and abandoning roughly 1 in 5 high-risk projects due to exposure or compliance constraints.

While exceptions are keeping work moving, the data shows they’re also driving measurable business impact. There is no cost-free path: every choice has a price. The full report explores how these trade-offs are playing out across environments, leadership roles, and risk decisions, and what organizations can do to break the cycle.

Download the full report: https://replicacyber.com/the-exception-economy/

*High risk digital work examples include: sensitive business projects (strategic research, innovation lab, IP development, high-stakes partnerships, M&A, etc), AI / LLM experimentation with sensitive data, AI agents or automation with some decision-making authority, threat intelligence & open-source investigations (OSINT), incident response / digital forensics, fraud and financial crime investigations, malware analysis and detonation.

About Replica Cyber

Replica is the secure environments platform for high-stakes work. It enables organizations to safely innovate, investigate, and collaborate in full isolation while protecting their data and systems. Replica helps teams ensure compliance while accelerating critical initiatives. Learn more at www.replicacyber.com.

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SOURCE Replica Cyber