The Autonomous Endpoint Management Advantage

Ivanti’s research — a global study of more than 600 executive leaders, 3,900 IT / cybersecurity professionals and 8,400 office workers around the world — examines how autonomous endpoint management (AEM) ensures continuous compliance, proactively reduces downtime and helps employees reclaim lost productivity. 

Despite strained resources, patching alignment challenges and ramping pressure to manage costs, just 32% of IT pros say their departments fully leverage automation. 

As organizations continue to evolve their digital environments, maximizing IT value with AI and automation becomes increasingly important to:  

• Proactively address tech friction, including interruptions.  
• Maintain excellent cyber hygiene, like filling visibility gaps and improving digital employee experience.  
• Optimize asset lifecycles and leverage self-healing capabilities. 

Listen to “The Autonomous Endpoint Management Advantage” to understand how autonomous endpoint management (AEM) platforms optimize these key IT duties to boost cost savings while enhancing security and compliance.  

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About Ivanti 

Ivanti elevates and secures anytime, anywhere work so that people and organizations can thrive. We make technology work for people, not the other way around. Today’s employees use a wide range of corporate and personal devices to access IT applications and data over multiple networks to stay productive wherever and however they work. Ivanti is one of the only technology companies that finds, manages and protects each IT asset and endpoint in an organization. Over 40,000 customers, including 88 of the Fortune 100, have chosen Ivanti to help them deliver excellent digital employee experiences and improve IT and security team productivity and efficiency. At Ivanti, we strive to create an environment where all perspectives are heard, respected and valued, and we are committed to a more sustainable future for our customers, partners, employees and the planet. For more information, visit ivanti.com and follow @GoIvanti. 

Transcript

Autonomous endpoint management, or AEM, unifies endpoint management, enterprise security and digital experience to intelligently automate tasks — empowering IT teams to work faster and smarter. 

You’re listening to the audio version of The Autonomous Endpoint Management Advantage, part of Ivanti’s cybersecurity research series. To see more Ivanti research visit ivanti, I-V-A-N-T-I.com/research.  

[Music begins]  

Part one: The IT breaking point 

Heavy workloads and burnout are eroding IT’s ability to focus on strategic priorities. Despite this, many companies overlook time-saving automations. 

[Music ends]  

IT professionals are stretched thin. Nearly two-thirds (62%) report feeling overwhelmed by day-to-day operations. And one in four (23%) say a colleague has resigned due to burnout. 

What’s behind these troubling numbers? A significant share of IT professionals say they need better technology. For example, 25% say they don’t have an effective tool to proactively remediate end-user issues — a seven-point increase in 12 months. 

Autonomous endpoint management, or AEM, offers organizations a forward-thinking approach. AEM enables IT teams to resolve routine tickets and anticipate problems before end users are affected. 

IT pros are on board: 67% say AI and automation will free up their time for more interesting, fulfilling work, and 66% believe these tools will allow them to provide better service to end users. 

The benefits of AEM extend beyond the IT team; AEM tools can also reduce friction in employees’ digital interactions. For example, office workers experience an average of 6.3 tech interruptions per month — whether due to tech problems or scheduled updates. If we assume each of these takes 15 minutes to resolve, tech interruptions cost companies 1.6 hours of productivity per employee monthly. As these micro-interruptions compound across the organization, they create measurable productivity drag. 

By solving problems proactively — before end users are even aware — AEM can reduce friction in workflows and help employees reclaim lost productivity. 

Despite the promise of automation, most organizations haven't capitalized on the opportunity. Only one in three (32%) say their organizations fully leverage automation within IT workflows. 

[Sting]  

How can you take action? 

Here’s what Tony Miller, Ivanti’s Vice President of Enterprise Services, has to say. 

“I think first and foremost it is around MTTR. So, it's that mean time to a resolution for any tickets that are coming through the pipeline. So, as you add automation, obviously, that's going to reduce the timeline there. So that's one of the key metrics that we certainly pay attention to.  

The other one that's important is that we do measure the number of tickets that are handled via automation as a percentage of the whole. And we're looking for growth, obviously. And that quarter by quarter and year by year basis. Important things to make sure that you are, indeed. Adding more automation to the pipeline, and it is actually adding value to the organization. 

And then that will kind of lead to productivity savings. And really, from our standpoint, productivity savings end up being reinvested into the org in terms of how we can upscale our team members. And then I think the final thing that really comes into play is a combination of change management and adoption. So, if you build the tools, that's great, but really the adoption is the key metric that we were trying to track initially. So, in the different tools that we're deploying within our organization, be it a POC or be it a full deployment to the enterprise. What does that adoption rate look like? And we're really trying to drive to adoption rates in the 75 to 80 percentile in the first quarter too. That's really key because... You know, without that adoption rate, really, in some of these AI initiatives, it's really not going to drive any value to the organization.”  

[Music begins]   

Part two: The cyber hygiene gap 

Adding to IT’s challenges, companies often take a haphazard approach to cyber hygiene, the routine practices that keep systems compliant, secure and updated. 

[Music ends]  

Maintaining cyber hygiene requires consistent, routine effort — but many IT teams are stretched thin, making this essential work challenging. Ivanti's research reveals why maintaining cyber hygiene has become such a difficult responsibility for IT teams: 

One reason is visibility gaps: Just 52% of organizations are using endpoint management solutions — down 4 points in one year. Without the centralized visibility of an endpoint management solution, essential cyber hygiene tasks become exponentially harder. IT teams are left manually configuring devices, a time-consuming and error-prone process. 

IT pros also tell us they have insufficient data to make decisions across a wide range of dimensions. The biggest blind spots: shadow IT (reported by 45% of respondents), identifying vulnerabilities (41%), and identifying devices accessing the network (38%). 

A second reason that maintaining cyber hygiene is difficult is challenges with patch management: IT is responsible for executing patch management, yet due to visibility gaps, they struggle to do the job effectively. For example, 38% say they have difficulty tracking patch status and rollouts, and 35% struggle to stay compliant. 

A third reason for the cyber hygiene gap is gaps in security monitoring: Device monitoring helps identify cyber hygiene problems like configuration drift that might otherwise go unnoticed. Yet only 40% say they use fully integrated, automated security and compliance systems. Without this level of monitoring, cyber hygiene issues can silently accumulate. 

[Sting]  

How can you take action? 

Here’s what Aruna Kureti, Ivanti’s Director of Product Management, has to say. 

“I would say that most of the friction between IT security around patching isn't technical. It's about different views of reality. Now, security has a vulnerability scanner and says that we see 10,000 critical vulnerabilities. Now, IT has a patch report and says that we have deployed everything you asked for to our managed devices.  

But with a unified AI-powered platform, imagine both teams seeing the same device inventory, the same vulnerabilities, and the same patch status. Dashboards show end-to-end exposure from detection to remediation, with mean time to remediation and exposure time You know, as a shared KPI. AI can answer natural language questions like, show me all the devices that are internet-facing, missing the latest critical patch or critical browser patch and used by privileged admins, which basically by far makes the conversation more concrete. So, this turns patching from security throwing spreadsheets over the wall into a joint data-driven process supported by automation that both things own.”  

[Music begins]  

Part three: Accelerating IT‑Ops with AI 

IT teams face dual pressures to manage costs and improve service quality. Autonomous endpoint management can help them break down costly silos, boost visibility and streamline IT operations. 

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CIOs are under pressure to make their operations more efficient and productive. Among IT pros we surveyed: 

56% say wasteful IT spend is a problem. 

And 39% cite “inefficient tech support” as an area of wasteful spend. 

The automation capabilities in AEM solutions can significantly reduce IT inefficiency while preserving service quality … and give IT teams a much-needed break. 

AEM reduces wasteful IT spending by optimizing asset lifecycles — tracking devices from acquisition through retirement to maximize utilization, avoid overprovisioning and ensure timely refresh cycles. This lifecycle visibility helps IT leaders make data-driven decisions that reduce both unnecessary purchases and hidden maintenance costs. 

AEM tools’ self-healing capabilities reduce the volume of routine service tickets by automatically detecting and resolving endpoint issues before users submit them. By deflecting these low-level incidents, IT teams can lower support costs and redirect time toward higher-value, strategic work. 

But AEM requires the right technology and connected data to work — and so far, these fundamentals are not in place. 

Among the biggest stumbling blocks are persistent silos: Nearly all (89%) of IT pros say siloed data negatively impacts their organization’s IT operations in one form or another. For example: 

39% say silos cause them to use resources inefficiently. 

36% say silos reduce collaboration. 

And 35% say silos drive up the risk of non-compliance. 

AEM addresses this challenge by bringing together endpoint management, digital experience monitoring and endpoint security into a unified platform. This ensures organizations have the comprehensive visibility needed to automate intelligently — seeing not just device health, but also user experience and security posture in one place. 

A second stumbling block is the lack of effective technology to manage and secure endpoints holistically. Just 32% use a unified endpoint management system. AEM's autonomous capabilities are most effective when organizations already have centralized endpoint management in place. Without unified visibility across endpoints, whether using a UEM system or other centralized management tools, adopting AEM becomes significantly more complex. 

Ivanti’s research shows that most IT teams are juggling multiple disconnected tools — or, in some cases, no centralized management at all. When these tools don't communicate with each other, the asset lifecycle optimization that drives efficiency becomes nearly impossible. IT can't easily track device utilization, identify overprovisioned resources or coordinate refresh cycles across the organization. And workflow inefficiencies can mount quickly. Think: redundant workflows, manual data reconciliation and increased risk of configuration errors. 

Disconnected systems make it nearly impossible for IT and security teams to get the complete visibility they need to make informed decisions and take action across the entire endpoint ecosystem. 

[Sting] 

How can you take action? 

Here’s what Scott Hughes, Ivanti’s Senior Vice President of Revenue Operations and Corporate IT, has to say. 

“There are a good number of use cases an organization can think of that will directly reduce IT spending and provide leadership with better leverage for business capacity. A few that rise to the top for me in particular include zero touch provisioning and the ability to eliminate the need for multiple authorization steps throughout the process. Those are typically manual. You know, they have to go through multiple layers of approval or authorization. Compliance and policy governance via continuous monitoring of devices.  

This ensures your remaining compliance with your organization's required policies, whether those be security policies, access policies, or software usage as examples. And then of course, you know, a big use case being threat detection and response. Using AI and machine learning driven monitoring to identify suspicious activity and then be in a position to automate and contain and remediate those threats. Where you automate these cases, your organizations can prioritize its resources to more higher value productivity activities versus what we see in repetitive or mundane tasking. Consider using IT admins to handle only exceptions, as opposed to manually provisioning or enrolling company devices.” 

[Music begins]  

Part four: Operationalizing autonomous endpoint management 

To eliminate inefficiency and waste, companies must integrate AEM into their IT workflows and processes and train IT teams to leverage these high-impact tools. 

[Music ends]  

Autonomous Endpoint Management works behind the scenes to continuously discover, monitor and address endpoint issues ... before IT ever gets involved. 

The benefits are evident: 

First, accelerated efficiency for IT teams: By using AI and automating core IT tasks — like device provisioning, patch management and performance monitoring — AEM helps organizations increase IT productivity and overall operational efficiency, reduce downtime and free up skilled staff for higher-value work. Ivanti’s research finds that 86% of IT pros say AI can make their IT operations more efficient. 

Another benefit is more robust compliance: AEM also supports compliance by constantly monitoring endpoints for adherence to security and regulatory policies, quickly remediating any deviations it detects. This approach streamlines the compliance process, simplifies audit preparation and helps organizations avoid potential penalties by ensuring endpoints always remain secure and policy compliant.

A third benefit is improved business continuity: By identifying and resolving IT issues and security before they disrupt operations, AEM minimizes unplanned downtime and keeps critical business services running smoothly. 

And a final benefit is enhanced end-user experience: An AEM approach proactively eliminates digital friction before employees ever encounter it — fixing performance issues and preventing application crashes. The result: Employees stay focused and productive rather than waiting for IT support. 

Despite the clear benefits, organizations are still struggling to adopt the technology and embed it within internal workflows. Fewer than half use AI/automation for these high-value IT use cases: predictive IT maintenance (42%), optimizing resource allocation (35%) and compliance checks (32%).

Organizations looking to adopt an AEM approach should focus on four foundational priorities: 

1. Establish comprehensive visibility across the IT and security infrastructure. (You can't automate what you can't see.) 
2. Prepare your technical infrastructure and processes to integrate AI and automation capabilities into existing workflows. 
3. Invest in training both IT teams and end users to work effectively with autonomous systems. IT professionals need skills to interpret AI recommendations and manage escalated issues, while employees need guidance on interacting with AI tools. 

And 4. Collect employee experience data to continuously evaluate and improve how these human-AI relationships are functioning. 

[Sting] 

How can you take action? 

Here’s what Rex McMillan, Ivanti’s Vice President of Product Management, has to say:  

“IT departments can use autonomous endpoint management or an AEM solution to change the digital employee experience first off by measuring. It comes down to determining the changes that they're able to implement in the environment and the number of man hours saved, not just in IT, but in user productivity. If I'm able to automate and deploy software to a user before he needs it, that's a ticket that never got submitted. So a lot of times when we talk about autonomous driving down the mean time to resolution, we also should be tracking the number of tickets per user, per year, per month, or per day, giving us an indication of, "hey, have we got reduced the number of friction points that come in?"  

It's very easy to start to see how removing those friction points, not only saves IT time, but it also saves the end user time and allows them to be productive and doing their work  

As we combine DEX (digital employee experience) and the scoring in with our manageability and our security capabilities, now we have the opportunity for us to really understand, "Hey, does this change impact our users?"  

If the application won't load, the network's not available, we're totally distracted, we're super frustrated, and we lose immense amounts of time in each employee's productivity, as well as in the IT impacts. So, looking for those friction points is a real key way of improving the output of our employees and changing the productivity of the entire business. 

[Sting]

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