The need to deploy a massive ecosystem of connected devices and sensors has reshaped public sector networks – stretching them to the most remote and austere places on Earth, at the very tactical edge. This was the picture government and military attendees painted at the recent Ivanti Public Sector Summit.
For today’s public sector IT, network, and cybersecurity professionals, managing tens of thousands of endpoints, mission-critical sensors in isolated locations that are difficult to reach for maintenance, and life-saving systems that simply cannot experience downtime is now common.
As Captain Patrick Thompson of the United States Coast Guard explained to attendees, “The Coast Guard has about 1,500 different locations globally in which we provide services. Many of those are manned Coast Guard stations, but we also have planes. We have helicopters. We have ships. And we also have a lot of remote sites. Oftentimes [these locations] sit at the top of a mountain.”
In this increasingly distributed environment, essential but foundational cybersecurity practices, such as managing endpoints, pushing updates, and installing patches can be incredibly difficult. That is why government agencies are evaluating AI-driven autonomous endpoint management solutions that can handle everyday cyber hygiene, freeing cybersecurity professionals to focus on higher-priority tasks and defend government networks more proactively.
We recently sat down with Chris Ginter, Vice President of Public Sector Sales at Ivanti, to learn more about the cybersecurity landscape facing government and education organizations and how autonomous endpoint management solutions can help them keep pace against sophisticated, AI-enabled threats.
Government Technology Insider (GTI): What different mobile technologies are currently being deployed by government, education and military organizations?
Chris Ginter: Public sector organizations rely on a broader range of mobile technologies than ever before. Beyond traditional laptops and desktops, agencies are deploying smartphones, tablets, ruggedized handheld devices, wearable technologies, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and mission-specific equipment operating at the tactical edge.
Organizations within the Department of War (DoW) and intelligence agencies often manage devices in air-gapped, highly disconnected, classified, and austere environments, while federal civilian agencies and state & local and education (SLED) organizations are supporting increasingly distributed student bodies and hybrid workforces.
As mobility has become central to mission execution, agencies and education organizations must securely manage endpoints across multiple operating systems, locations, classifications, and connectivity models. The challenge is no longer simply managing individual devices. It’s maintaining visibility, security, and compliance across a highly diverse and continuously expanding endpoint ecosystem.
GTI: Has the number of endpoints and devices increased? What is driving this increase?
Chris Ginter: Absolutely. The number of endpoints has grown exponentially across the public sector because nearly every mission today relies on digital connectivity. Federal agencies and SLED organizations are modernizing legacy systems, deploying cloud services, embracing mobile-first workflows, and expanding connected technologies across operational environments.
In addition, these organizations must manage not only furnished devices, but also a growing number of specialized mission systems, operational technologies, and connected assets. Every new initiative, whether focused on mobility, modernization, citizen services, AI, or cybersecurity, tends to introduce additional endpoints that all require management and protection. The result is significantly greater complexity and a larger attack surface than most public sector organizations faced just a few years ago.
GTI: How does the larger ecosystem of endpoints and devices impact the security of public sector organizations?
Chris Ginter: Every endpoint represents a potential entry point for bad actors and nation-state attackers. As the number and variety of devices increase, maintaining visibility becomes more difficult, and security gaps become easier for adversaries to exploit.
Many government agencies and education institutions struggle with incomplete asset inventories, delayed patching, configuration drift, and unmanaged devices. A single unpatched endpoint can create an opportunity for compromise that jeopardizes critical missions or sensitive data. The problem becomes even harder when these organizations operate across multiple networks, security domains, geographic locations, and classifications.
Security and IT teams cannot protect what they cannot see. Comprehensive endpoint visibility and continuous monitoring have become foundational requirements for cybersecurity, compliance, and Zero Trust initiatives.
GTI: How do public sector organizations currently handle endpoint management?
Chris Ginter: Most of these organizations have historically relied on a combination of endpoint management tools, security platforms, manual processes, and IT personnel to manage device inventories, deploy software, enforce policies, and remediate vulnerabilities.
While many organizations have modernized portions of their environments, endpoint management often remains fragmented across multiple tools and teams. IT operations, cybersecurity, service management, and mobility teams frequently operate with different systems, data sets, and workflows. As environments become larger and more complex, maintaining visibility and consistency becomes increasingly difficult.
GTI: What inefficiencies and deficiencies exist in this system and approach?
Chris Ginter: The biggest challenge is that traditional endpoint management depends heavily on manual effort. Security and IT teams spend significant time identifying vulnerabilities, prioritizing remediation, applying patches, investigating issues, and responding to incidents.
Unfortunately, cyber threats and technology change faster than humans can manage at scale. Vulnerabilities emerge daily. New devices continuously connect to agency networks. Compliance standards evolve. Meanwhile, public-sector organizations face workforce shortages and budget constraints.
This creates operational bottlenecks, delays remediation efforts, increases risk exposure, and ultimately shifts valuable personnel away from mission-focused work toward repetitive administrative tasks.
GTI: What is autonomous endpoint management?
Chris Ginter: Autonomous endpoint management represents the next evolution of endpoint operations, and it is already here. Rather than requiring administrators to manually identify, analyze, and remediate every issue, intelligent systems continuously monitor the environment, identify risks, make recommendations, and automatically execute approved actions within established governance frameworks.
Capabilities include autonomous patching, predictive remediation, self-healing endpoints, automated compliance enforcement, continuous asset discovery, and AI-driven decision support. The goal is not to remove humans from the process, but to automate routine tasks, reduce repetitive work, and empower public sector IT and security professionals to focus on higher-value mission priorities.
GTI: How is it different from the endpoint management approaches and tools currently leveraged in the public sector?
Chris Ginter: Traditional endpoint management is largely reactive. IT and security teams identify problems, investigate them, determine corrective actions, and then implement those actions manually or through scripted automation.
Autonomous endpoint management shifts organizations toward proactive and increasingly self-directed operations. AI-powered automation continuously analyzes data across the endpoint ecosystem, identifies emerging issues before they impact users, prioritizes actions based on risk, and automates remediation through predefined, government-compliant guardrails.
The difference is similar to the difference between driving a vehicle manually and using advanced driver-assistance technology. Humans remain responsible and in control, but the technology continuously assists, monitors, and acts faster than manual methods alone can achieve.
GTI: Why is endpoint management an ideal use case for AI-driven automation?
Chris Ginter: Endpoint management generates enormous amounts of data and involves highly repetitive, rules-based processes. Agencies and education institutions must continuously assess asset inventories, monitor device health, identify vulnerabilities, validate compliance, prioritize risk, and deploy remediation actions.
These are exactly the types of tasks where AI excels. AI-powered automation can process far more data than humans, identify patterns that would otherwise be missed, prioritize risk based on context, and take immediate action when predefined conditions are met.
Instead of requiring analysts to sift through thousands of alerts or devices, AI lets organizations focus on exceptions, strategic decisions, and mission outcomes while routine endpoint operations run automatically.
GTI: Why should public sector organizations be looking to AI-driven endpoint management?
Chris Ginter: Public sector organizations and educational institutions are expected to defend complex environments against increasingly sophisticated threats while operating under persistent staffing and budget constraints.
AI-driven automation helps these organizations close that gap. It improves visibility, accelerates vulnerability remediation, reduces operational burden, supports continuous compliance, strengthens Zero Trust initiatives, and enables security and IT teams to respond faster than manual processes allow.
Most importantly, it helps public sector organizations shift from a reactive posture to a proactive one. Rather than responding after issues occur, these organizations can prevent many problems before they affect operations, employees, constituents, students, and, most importantly, mission success.
GTI: What should government agencies, military organizations, and education institutions be looking for in an autonomous endpoint management solution?
Chris Ginter: Public sector organizations should look for solutions built on four foundational capabilities.
The first capability to look for is comprehensive visibility across all endpoints, including managed, unmanaged, mobile, remote, furnished, and employee-owned devices.
Next, they should be looking for AI-driven automation that operates within clearly defined governance frameworks, meets compliance requirements, and supports human oversight rather than replacing it.
The third capability is risk-based prioritization and autonomous remediation capabilities that can proactively identify and address vulnerabilities before they become security incidents.
Finally, public sector organizations should seek a unified platform that integrates endpoint management, security operations, compliance monitoring, digital employee experience, and AI-powered automation into a common operating environment.
The most effective autonomous endpoint management solutions combine trusted data, AI-powered automation, governance, and human decision-making to reduce risk while helping government agencies and education institutions operate more efficiently, securely, and resiliently in support of their mission.
To learn more about how autonomous endpoint management solutions can protect SLED organizations against AI-driven cyberattacks, click here.