Autonomous IT

Landon Miles (00:00):

Welcome back to the Automox Hands-On IT podcast. As always, I'm your host, Landon Miles. Today’s episode explores a central theme in effective endpoint management: making smarter decisions by using your data wisely. Whether you manage hundreds or thousands of endpoints across Windows, macOS, Linux, servers, workstations, or laptops, there’s valuable insight hiding in the data you collect.

We’ll be talking about this topic all month long on the Autonomous IT Podcast, so be sure to subscribe to get new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.

Let’s get started with three tactical tips to reduce noise, improve reporting, and proactively manage your environment.

1. Make Notifications Work for You: Cut Alert Fatigue Down to Size
IT and security teams deal with a relentless flood of alerts—many of which are irrelevant. This overload leads to alert fatigue, where even critical warnings get overlooked. If alerts pop up every five minutes, you’re not going to look at them. Nearly every security professional agrees: too many alerts can paralyze a team. That’s why it’s essential to reduce noise and make each alert meaningful.

Start by adjusting alert thresholds to reflect what’s truly important in your environment. If CPU spikes are normal during scans, don’t get paged every time it happens—set realistic parameters so alerts only trigger when action is truly required. Eliminate duplicates and false positives by adjusting roles and integrating context into your notifications.

If you’re listening to this, you probably use Automox. The Automox console helps you control the chaos. Configure notifications to prioritize what really matters, such as critical patch failures or devices that have gone silent. By customizing alerts and consolidating endpoint tools, you reduce redundant notifications and regain control. The goal: see what needs attention, without getting drowned in noise.

2. Optimize Reporting: Make Insights Accessible
If reporting is hard to use, you’re not going to use it. Many teams delay reporting simply because the process is too complex. If reports are hard to generate or interpret, they go unused. Good reporting should tell a clear story, highlight important trends, and support decision making. Make it as easy as possible to access and automate your reports—put insights front and center.

Use intuitive dashboards and saved queries. You can do this in the Automox console or any tool you use, surfacing what matters most. Need a list of servers or devices missing critical patches? Save that view. Need to track SLA compliance? Build a dashboard or report. When data is easy to access, it becomes part of your daily routine, not a burden.

Remember, your team doesn’t need the same metrics your executives do. I always joke that Automox can give you pie charts or real data—sometimes those little pie charts are just what your executive team wants, and that’s great. But if you’re troubleshooting, you need deep access to the data that really matters. So, build reports that match your stakeholders: high-level compliance metrics for leadership, detailed patch failure info for your technical teams. Don’t mix those up, or neither group will get what they need.

The easier your reports are to understand and act on, the more likely they’ll be used.

3. Leverage Data to Predict and Prevent Issues
Study your past to manage your future. Endpoint data isn’t just historical—it’s predictive. Use patch logs and task history to identify failure patterns, user disruption trends, or recurring compliance issues. Maybe your patch windows need adjustment, or certain devices routinely fall out of policy. The data will show you.

Use your data to refine patching strategies. If reboots succeed more often midweek, adjust your schedule. If a particular app generates excessive alerts, automate remediation. There are plenty of tools—including Automox—that help you use historical data to support data-driven decisions. You’ll shift from reactive to proactive management. Most organizations haven’t fully automated their endpoint management, and many still lack full visibility into their fleets.

By asking smarter questions—Why is patch compliance dropping? What’s causing automation failures?—you can start addressing root causes. Use your data to flag outlier systems, aging devices, and overlooked tasks. Build automation where it’s missing. Pull in that data, get a clean picture of your environment, and life gets a lot easier.

So, this week, take a closer look at your own endpoint data. Choose one area—notifications, reporting, or trend analysis—and apply a single improvement. Tune those noisy alerts or build a useful saved view. Examine last quarter’s patch trends: What went wrong? What went well? Small steps build better systems.

Using your data intelligently helps you eliminate busywork, anticipate problems, and run a more secure, efficient operation. Use the data—it’s one of your most important and powerful tools.

Until next time, I’m Landon Miles. This is Hands-On IT. Happy fixing.