Cybercriminals Have Open Access to Enterprise PCs 76 Days Per Year, According to New Research from Absolute Security

Absolute Security, an enterprise cyber resilience leader, published its 2026 Resilience Risk Index, revealing that endpoint security software fails to protect devices nearly 21 percent of the time. This finding means that globally-distributed PCs are vulnerable to AI-driven attacks and cyber incidents up to 76 days per year—a gap that is contributing to $400 billion in annual downtime losses.¹

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“Cyberattacks are inevitable, downtime is optional,” said Christy Wyatt, President and CEO of Absolute Security. “The cybersecurity industry has rushed to provide innovations that detect and prevent threats, unfortunately it’s lagging when it comes to ensuring that tools can remain operational when they are needed most. Enterprise security, risk, and business leaders that are working together to ensure their critical defenses remain resilient under any conditions will avoid falling victim to the downtime era.”

Absolute Security Resilience Risk Index 2026 Top Highlights
To compile the report, the company’s Cyber Resilience experts analyzed anonymized telemetry across millions of endpoint devices. Included in the research are additional key findings revealing why downtime has become a global economic crisis:

• Critical OS patching across PCs running Windows 10 and 11 is behind an average of 127 days, leaving devices vulnerable to downtime caused by zero day attacks, ransomware, compromise, and configuration failures. This is a sharp increase over what was revealed in the 2025 report, when overall patching lagged 56 days.

• 10% of PCs continue to run on Windows 10. With Microsoft having ended support for the OS in October 2025, these devices are now highly-exposed to adapting and emerging vulnerabilities and attacks.

• PCs continue to engage with high-risk GenAI sites like DeepSeek while also massively increasing the number of browser sessions observed from 150 million to 350 million, year-over-year. With endpoint security tools failing 20% of the time, this means that GenAI visits may be taking place without governance applied.

• Across all industries, 20 percent of connected devices store sensitive data, with 30 percent lacking encryption, and 25 percent unaccounted for. Last year’s report revealed that 18 percent of connected devices stored sensitive data, with 35 percent lacking encryption, and 26 percent unaccounted for.

• Endpoint devices are rapidly becoming the new AI platform, despite security software failing 20 percent of the time. In the 2025 report, it was shown that 68 percent of PCs had enough RAM needed to fully take advantage of AI (16-32 GB). This year, it was revealed that enterprises are ramping investment in AI ready devices, with 96% now equipped with 16-32 GB.

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