Managed Patching

What is Managed Patching?

Patch management is the process of distributing and applying updates to software. These patches are often necessary to correct errors (also referred to as “vulnerabilities” or “bugs”) in the software. Common areas that will need patches include operating systems, applications, and embedded systems (like network equipment). When a vulnerability is found after the release of a piece of software, a patch can be used to fix it. Doing so helps ensure that assets in your environment are not susceptible to exploitation.

Why do we need patch management?

Patch management fixes vulnerabilities on your software and applications that are susceptible to cyber-attacks, helping your organization reduce its security risk.

Patch management ensures your software and applications are kept up-to-date and run smoothly, supporting system uptime.

With the continued rise in cyber-attacks, organizations are often required by regulatory bodies to maintain a certain level of compliance. Patch management is a necessary piece of adhering to compliance standards.

Patch management can go beyond software bug fixes to also include feature/functionality updates. Patches can be critical to ensuring that you have the latest and greatest that a product has to offer.

How your organization benefits from an efficient patch management program

A more secure environment

When you’re regularly patching vulnerabilities, you’re helping to manage and reduce the risk that exists in your environment. This helps protect your organization from potential security breaches.

Happy customers

If your organization sells a product or service that requires customers to use your technology, you know how important it is that the technology actually works. Patch management is the process of fixing software bugs, which helps keep your systems up and running.

No unnecessary fines

If your organization is not patching and, therefore, not meeting compliance standards, you could be hit with some monetary fines from regulatory bodies. Successful patch management ensures that you are in compliance

Continued product innovation

You can implement patches to update your technology with improved features and functionality. This can provide your organization with a way to deploy your latest innovations to your software at scale.

The patch management process

It would be a poor strategy to just install new patches the second they become available for all assets in your organization's inventory without considering the impact. Instead, a more strategic approach should be taken. Patch management should be implemented with a detailed, organizational process that is both cost-effective and security-focused.

Develop an up-to-date inventory of all your production systems

Whether this be on a quarterly or monthly basis, this is the only way to truly monitor what assets exist in your ecosystem. Through diligent asset management, you’ll have an informed view of operating systems, version types, and IP addresses that exist, along with their geographic locations and organizational “owners.” As a general rule, the more frequently you maintain your asset inventory, the more informed you're going to be.

Devise a plan for standardizing systems and operating systems to the same version type

Although difficult to execute on, standardizing your asset inventory makes patching faster and more efficient. You’ll want to standardize your assets down to a manageable number so that you can accelerate your remediation process as new patches are released. This will help save both you and technical teams time spent remediating.

Keep track of your firewalls, antivirus, and vulnerability management tool. You’ll want to know where these are sitting, what they’re protecting, and which assets are associated with them.

Compare reported vulnerabilities against your inventor

Using your vulnerability management tool to assess which vulnerabilities exist for which assets in your ecosystem is going to help you understand your security risk as an organization

Classify the risk

Through vulnerability management tools you can easily manage which assets you consider to be critical to your organization and, therefore, prioritize what needs to be remediated accordingly.

TEST!

Apply the patches to a representative sample of assets in your lab environment. Stress test the machines to ensure that the patches will not cause issues in your production environment

Apply the patches

Once you’ve prioritized what needs to be remediated first, start patching to actually reduce the risk in your environment. More advanced vulnerability management tools also offer the ability to automate the time-consuming parts of the patching process. Consider rolling the patches out to batches of assets; although you already tested in your lab environment (you did do that right!?) there may still be unexpected results in production. Dip a few toes in before jumping in all the way to make there won’t be any widespread issues.

Track your progress

Reassess your assets to ensure patching was successful.

What is Managed Patching?

Why do we need patch management?

Patch management fixes vulnerabilities on your software and applications that are susceptible to cyber-attacks, helping your organization reduce its security risk.

Patch management ensures your software and applications are kept up-to-date and run smoothly, supporting system uptime.

With the continued rise in cyber-attacks, organizations are often required by regulatory bodies to maintain a certain level of compliance. Patch management is a necessary piece of adhering to compliance standards.

Patch management can go beyond software bug fixes to also include feature/functionality updates. Patches can be critical to ensuring that you have the latest and greatest that a product has to offer.

How your organization benefits from an efficient patch management program

A more secure environment

When you’re regularly patching vulnerabilities, you’re helping to manage and reduce the risk that exists in your environment. This helps protect your organization from potential security breaches.

Happy customers

If your organization sells a product or service that requires customers to use your technology, you know how important it is that the technology actually works. Patch management is the process of fixing software bugs, which helps keep your systems up and running.

No unnecessary fines

If your organization is not patching and, therefore, not meeting compliance standards, you could be hit with some monetary fines from regulatory bodies. Successful patch management ensures that you are in compliance

Continued product innovation

You can implement patches to update your technology with improved features and functionality. This can provide your organization with a way to deploy your latest innovations to your software at scale.

The patch management process

Develop an up-to-date inventory of all your production systems

Devise a plan for standardizing systems and operating systems to the same version type

Keep track of your firewalls, antivirus, and vulnerability management tool. You’ll want to know where these are sitting, what they’re protecting, and which assets are associated with them.

Compare reported vulnerabilities against your inventor

Using your vulnerability management tool to assess which vulnerabilities exist for which assets in your ecosystem is going to help you understand your security risk as an organization

Classify the risk

Through vulnerability management tools you can easily manage which assets you consider to be critical to your organization and, therefore, prioritize what needs to be remediated accordingly.

TEST!

Apply the patches to a representative sample of assets in your lab environment. Stress test the machines to ensure that the patches will not cause issues in your production environment

Apply the patches

Track your progress

Reassess your assets to ensure patching was successful.

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