TREND 2
The burden of manual reporting and the impact on resourcing, effectiveness and morale
Board-level visibility and scrutiny has understandably driven the need for more regular and detailed reporting.
Growth in time spent manually reporting on controls effectiveness from 2019 - 2023
Security Leaders Peer Report, 2024
Luckily for CISOs, enterprise organizations tend to be data rich. It means they have a wealth of information to call upon when looking to provide the assurances increasingly demanded of them.
Our 2026 results determined how often teams test controls, measure risk and prepare for audits, and the picture is clear: audit and reporting tasks now dominate the security calendar.
This shift has placed a heavy strain on resources, transforming security teams from strategic defenders to data processors. At the end of 2023, almost two thirds (59%) of a security teams time was spent manually collating, correlating, and reporting on data. This is a huge increase of 64% in under four years.
In 2026, an average 100-person security team equates to around 24,000 staff hours per year. If 60% of that time is absorbed by manual data work, more than 14,000 hours annually are being diverted from active defence and resilience work to spreadsheet wrangling.
And it’s not just the sheer volume of (often disparate) data that’s the issue. Steps taken to collate, clean, and analyse data are all a repeat exercise as teams respond to the latest audit, compliance and reporting ask.
An estimated 14,000 hours annually are spent reporting for an average 100-persons security team.
Security Leaders Peer Report, 2026
Case study The benefit of automtation
Automation drives consistency. When a process is automated, we know that we get accurate results time and time again. That means we have a high level of confidence in the validity of those results and the data is not in question.
“There is also a key thing that any security function always needs to be thinking about: how are we reducing operational costs and maximising productivity benefits? Automating the processes around all security measurements allows you to scale and reduce the scale of the operation.
David Fairman
CISO and advisory board member
The importance of automating security controls coverage
Read more
Automated data connectors in the Panaseer platform
It represents a substantial drain on resource in an industry that is already facing a skills shortage. In 2025, three quarters (72%) of security leaders believed they could prevent more breaches if they spent less time reporting. It is also likely to be a contributing factor in the decline in overall job satisfaction – at the end of 2024, 47% of leaders said they felt more anxious and 15% were even considering leaving the industry altogether.
Data and oversight are also crucial in underpinning a more proactive security approach - but existing manual reporting processes are not sustainable. Despite dedicating extensive time to reporting activities, many security leaders still lack confidence in their data, leading to challenges in visibility and assurance.
Instead, security leaders need to move towards an automated approach that leverages machine learning and data science to collate, correlate, normalise, and analyze controls data to deliver trusted, contextualised oversight into their organization’s security posture. Automation will alleviate the burden of manual reporting, improve data accuracy and drive efficiencies (imagine giving your team over half of their working week back), and in turn empower individuals to focus on higher value tasks that protect critical services and revenue streams.
72% of security leaders believe they could prevent more breaches if they spent less time on reporting.
Security Leaders Peer Report, 2025
TL;DR What this means for security leaders
- Data is a key component to adopting a proactive security approach – but current manual approaches to data collection and reporting are not sustainable.
- Instead, CISOs need to utilize automation, such as purpose-build CCM platforms, to collate, normalize, analyze, and even report on data.
- Armed with insight, security teams can minimize control failures, surface hidden risks, and inform better decision-making that drives proactivity – and regain up to half of their working week.
