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Manual work is eating IT alive – and this year’s State of Endpoint Management report shows exactly where that strain is coming from. Even with better tools and growing expectations for automation, most organizations are still stuck in the past.
Teams are dealing with more devices, more vulnerabilities, and more distributed environments. But instead of gaining efficiency, many are losing ground – held back by legacy systems, fragmented tools, and limited visibility.
This year’s survey highlights a clear pattern: manual work is slowing teams down and widening the attack surface. Forty-three percent of respondents spend 10 or more hours each week on manual endpoint tasks, and more than half take five or more days to patch or don’t know their MTTP at all. Only six percent say they’ve reached full automation.
Endpoint Visibility Gaps Create Security Blind Spots
Visibility is another major challenge. Most teams still build reports manually, and only seventeen percent have a unified dashboard showing end-to-end patch status. With spreadsheets aging faster than the data inside them, teams are making decisions without reliable insight into risk.
Partial Automation Isn’t Enough to Reduce Risk
At the same time, partial automation hasn’t been enough to close the gap. While many teams automate OS patching, most rely on scripts or ad hoc workflows that don’t scale. Budget constraints, technical debt, and skill gaps continue to slow progress.
The Shift Toward Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM)
Still, this year’s report shows strong momentum toward autonomous endpoint management – if teams can build the right trust and guardrails. Top safeguards requested include automated rollbacks, pause/override controls, and RBAC with audit logs. Together, these create the confidence teams need to shift from reactive manual work to proactive automation.
See How Your IT Team Compares in 2026
Want to see how your team compares – and where the biggest opportunities lie?
Sources
AI, Humans, and the Hybrid Reality of IT in 2026 - A deeper discussion of the automation trust and human-AI collaboration themes in the report
Why IT Teams Are Drowning in Data - The visibility and reporting challenges that the report's respondents identified
IT Ins and Outs for 2025 - See how 2025 predictions compared to the 2026 survey results
Frequently asked questions
The State of Endpoint Management Report is an annual survey-based study of IT professionals that measures trends in endpoint management practices, challenges, and automation adoption. The 2026 edition reveals that manual work remains the top burden, with 43% of teams spending 10+ hours weekly on manual tasks.
Only 6% of surveyed organizations have achieved full endpoint management automation. The majority operate with partial automation, where some tasks are automated but manual intervention is still required for exceptions, approvals, and troubleshooting.
Budget constraints, technical debt, and lack of trust in automated systems are the top barriers. Many teams have been burned by automation failures and want guardrails like automated rollbacks, pause/override controls, and audit logs before they will fully trust automated workflows.
The report shows IT teams want automated rollbacks that revert failed changes, pause and override controls that let humans intervene when needed, and RBAC with comprehensive audit logs that provide accountability. These guardrails build the trust needed to move from partial to full automation.
The 2026 report shows progress in automation adoption but highlights that the gap between aspiration and reality remains significant. More teams are automating patching, but manual work in areas like reporting, troubleshooting, and compliance verification has not decreased proportionally.