Automation and scripting in SMBs: Trends, challenges and what actually works

### Executive summary: This Acronis TRU analysis of 100 million script runs across 11,500 organizations shows automation is highly concentrated and dominated by small PowerShell scripts, with roughly 85% of scripts inactive or abandoned; AI-generated scripts are increasingly deployed to production. The report highlights security risks from forgotten scripts (embedded credentials, scheduled tasks with elevated privileges) and the growing abuse of legitimate administrative tooling in intrusions, and recommends treating automation as operational infrastructure with inventorying, review, credential rotation and monitoring.