ServiceNow CFO: Security Tops AI Barriers, AI Control Tower Eyed

ServiceNow's AI Control Tower arrives as enterprise customers move past simple productivity experiments toward larger deployments. According to CFO Gina Mastantuono, those conversations increasingly center on deploying AI at scale while keeping security, governance and cost controls in place — and security and risk management remain the largest obstacles customers cite. That gap between ambition and controls is the backdrop for a product designed to manage agents from ServiceNow, third-party platforms and internal teams in one place.

The body's numbers suggest why this is becoming a board-level topic. AI usage rose ninefold from Q1 to Q2, more than 50 customers now pay over $1 million for new AI packages, and ServiceNow lifted its 2026 AI target from $1 billion to $1.5 billion. Alongside that, the article points to reported customer savings from agentic workflows — a 65% reduction in IT service-desk costs for Raleigh and potential savings exceeding $5 million for a European energy company — which gives buyers concrete examples to weigh against governance concerns.

The test ahead is whether tools that monitor costs and measure ROI can ease the security and risk worries Mastantuono says block large-scale rollouts. If they do, ServiceNow's raised AI target looks more attainable; if not, the same concerns may keep deployments smaller than customers and vendors would like.