How automation can reduce human error, improve team morale and reduce security risks
For anyone working in IT or security, it probably comes as no surprise that between 25-33 per cent of breaches reported to the OAIC from January 2021 to June 2024 were attributed to human error. As much as we must trust the expertise of software engineers and security professionals, they're only human, making it an unfair match against the rapid increase in volume and sophistication of cyber threats.
New Tanium research found that human error causes almost half of IT teams to spend between 1.6 and 2.9 days per month fixing mistakes, with 17% spending a minimum of 3 days fixing mistakes. The issue is more severe in larger organisations. In organisations with 10,000 employees or more, 16% of IT teams spend more than 10 days per month resolving errors, compared to just 2% in organisations with 1,000-4,999 employees.
IT teams are burning out trying to keep up with threats and with this comes mistakes. Our research found burnout is experienced in 69% of IT teams. And whilst errors lead to a loss of productivity, they also pose significant security risks. Even if resolved quickly, these mistakes can have catastrophic consequences if exploited by bad actors.
Automation has the capacity to transform the way IT teams operate, from automated threat hunting to automated patching. However, not all organisations have caught on yet.
Improving IT team morale & reducing burnout
Low morale and employee satisfaction can quickly lead to poor company culture, high staff turnover, and significant impacts on the business's bottom line. Furthermore, time spent working out-of-hours typically involves time off during regular working hours, pulling skilled employees away from valuable tasks, and further impacting business productivity and profitability.
Our research found three-quarters of IT workers say automation could help reduce burnout. It's no wonder, particularly when one-third are spending 5-15 hours every week on scheduled activities outside of regular hours, and 15% of IT teams are spending over 16 hours per week. Our experience with IT operations teams tells us that in many cases, patching teams patch between 2 am and 4 am and over the weekends to minimise disruption. This can significantly disrupt the sleep patterns and routines of teams, as well as the number of hours they can work during the week on more meaningful tasks.
Burnout is also highly linked to a lack of purpose. Almost three-quarters of IT workers want to adopt automation tools so they can work on more meaningful projects, whilst 90% noted that manual, repetitive tasks impact workforce morale.
The cost of burnout is not just an HR issue. It's a security issue, too. IT Teams that have a full mental load or are feeling emotionally or physically tired are more likely to experience burnout and therefore become less productive, make mistakes themselves and overlook errors by peers. Each of these outcomes creates more risk for the business, with major security implications.
Balancing cost and risk
As security threats from external bad actors continue to rise, the increasing number of devices and endpoints connected to every business means the risks are also growing exponentially daily.
IT teams simply don't have the resources to stay on top of every bad actor. From our research, over three-quarters of IT workers say automation tools could improve overall security by shortening patch cycles, reducing vulnerability exposure timeframes and lessening time spent on incident response.
Relying on human efforts alone is not an effective way to arm your organisation in 2025. Organisations should look at ways to adopt automation that provides good governance and human oversight whilst remaining simple to implement.
This can however present a budget challenge for many organisations. Our research found that budget is the biggest inhibitor of automation adoption. According to ADAPT, simplification is a priority for IT leadership, therefore many are reluctant to invest in new tools. Its research found that 66% of CIOs plan to consolidate their vendor portfolios to achieve a 20% reduction in costs. At the same time, IT budgets are being cut and teams are being asked to do more with less. This creates a near-impossible task to put squarely on the heads of team members.
That's where real-time insights come in. For example, too much time and resources are currently taken up by scanning for vulnerabilities and manually deploying patches to fix them. Often, this is done with disparate point tools meaning that one team performs the scan and then passes the results to another team to reconcile and remediate. This is an outdated method that is contributing to the burnout and productivity challenges we see across IT teams.
Automated vulnerability monitoring and remediation gives IT and security teams a safe, scalable and fast way to ensure compliance and reduce risk. Concepts such as confidence scores enable the operator to understand if a patch is going to be successful or cause an impact before it has even been deployed, freeing up much-needed resources and providing peace of mind when it comes to automating remediation activities..
Our research showed respondents thought automation could improve an organisation's overall security posture by increasing productivity, reducing employee burnout, and limiting opportunities for human error. To achieve these outcomes and reduce exposure to cyber threats, a cohesive automation strategy that balances cost, risk and team morale is urgently needed.
