Patch
Management
Keep your systems secure with Patch Management
The current spotlight on cybersecurity has drawn some focus to the criticality of software patches. A quick look at recent data breaches shows that a collection of software and hardware flaws that were not patched were mainly responsible for most of the data breaches.
Patch management is a process that manages a network of computers by constantly deploying all missing patches to keep computers up to date.
Our BinaryGuardian Patch Armor is an automated patch management software for servers, workstations, and third-party applications..
It helps in managing the life-cycle of applications, hardware, operating systems, and hot fixes for desktop computers, laptops and servers.
Patch Management for IT systems is a major part of our small business portfolio.
What is Patch Management?
Patch management is the process that helps acquire, test and install multiple patches (updates to fix errors in code) on existing applications and software tools on a computer.
Patch management enables computer systems to stay updated on existing releases by vendors, and determining which patches are the appropriate ones. It makes the application of patches easy and simple.
Patch management plays a critical role in endpoint cybersecurity. Patches are released to fix vulnerabilities or security gaps in firmware, operating systems and other application software. If patches are not applied in a timely manner, networks can be severely compromised.
Patch Management is mostly done by software companies as part of their internal efforts to fix problems with the different versions of software programs and also to help analyze existing software programs and detect any potential lack of security features or other upgrades.
Key benefits and capabilities of Patching
Comprehensive patch sourcing
Our industry-leading patch management operation team monitors key sources of patch intelligence—including Microsoft, Microsoft Security Bulletin, application vendors, CVE, automated crawler systems, and more—to identify the updates relevant for your environment.
Prioritization and scheduling
Prioritize patch deployment based on severity, vendor, or type, and automate scheduling for critical updates to be run daily while all others are implemented during regular maintenance windows.
Change management
There’s a lot of software running in your organization, and none of it is flawless. Track and report on all endpoint patch policies, network status changes, applied and/or missing patches, and any failed deployment attempts.
Compliance
Maintain patch consistency on the schedule you configure to ensure ongoing compliance for the entire enterprise.
Automatic system discovery
It allows management to identify which endpoints contain vulnerabilities and need to be patched. This provides a real-time view of your network via automatic discovery of all managed endpoints to identify installed and/or missing security patches and detect vulnerabilities.
Efficient deployment
Installation can be scheduled by time, computer, group, or user-defined collections of computers, or it can be triggered on demand—and control over schedules and reboot scenarios helps minimize downtime.
Audit and assessment
Every application can be tracked and patched over the network in real time, providing visibility into global patch inventory with sophisticated network status and health reports.
Testing
Although Tech Prognosis performs extensive and deep testing, you can run your own tests to approve patches either one at a time or in bulk.
Solution: BinaryGuardian Patch Armor
Our BinaryGuardian Patch Armor helps in managing the life-cycle of applications, hardware, operating systems, and hot fixes for desktop computers, laptops and servers.
Patch Armor will keep your systems up-to-date with the latest software updates by discovering missing patches and deploying them to the entire organization, automatically. This includes patches and updates from Microsoft as well third-part applications from vendors like Adobe, Mozilla etc.
What are the benefits?
Patch Armor addresses the challenges faced by many small businesses in keeping their computer systems up to date by:
- Automating the patch management process. The application scans each device and sends an alert when updates are available. Automatically approve patches (by severity) and schedule installation of approved patches.
- Flexibility. Patches can be scheduled for off-hours to avoid disrupting users, especially if the update requires a restart.
- Third-party applications can be patched as well as native operating system updates. Most vendor applications are supported, including Instant Messaging Clients.
- Patch can be applied anywhere whether the devices are on-premise or on the road. For devices that are powered off, the patches are applied as soon as they come online.
Take advantage of our 30-Day trial of Patch Armor, our Patch Management Service in Round Rock, TX and surrounding cities today!
Frequently Asked Questions About Patch Management
Patch management process features to detect missing patches, install the patches or hotfixes that are released from time to time, and provide instant updates on the latest patch deployment status.
Budget pressures continue to be high on IT organizations, and so automating day to day routine tasks is critical. Patch management software can be automated to enable all the computers to remain up-to-date with the recent patch releases from the application software vendors.
It is critical to take necessary steps to enhance the security posture of enterprises – large and small. Therefore, consistent patching of operating systems and applications with an automated patch management solution is important to mitigate and prevent security risks.
- The automated patch management is used to automate the various stages of patching process
- Scan the applications of devices for missing patches
- Automate the downloading of missing patches that are released by the application vendors.
- Automated Patch Deployment ensures to automatically deploy patches based on the deployment policies, without any manual interference.
- Once the patches are deployed, reports on the status of the automated patch management tasks are updated.
With automated Patch Management solution, each enterprise is equipped to update its endpoints with latest patches irrespective of what OS they run and where they are located.
Patching is a process to repair a vulnerability or a flaw that is identified after the release of an application or a software. Newly released patches can fix a bug or a security flaw, can help to enhance applications with new features, fix security vulnerability.
Unpatched software can make the device a vulnerable target of exploits. Patching a software as and when the patch is released is critical to deny malware access.
Not a day goes by without some news about a data breach of some sort. Sadly, many of these breaches are as a result of computer systems that are outdated, poorly maintained, or not properly configured.
Proper patch management could have prevented a lot of the security breaches in the news today.
In many cases, applying a patch that was released by the software vendor could have made a difference. The lack of a proper patch management process in many cases left most of these systems vulnerable.
As Jason Chan noted, “Managing updates for all the applications and operating system versions used in a small company is fairly complicated, and the situation only becomes more complex when additional platforms, availability requirements, and remote offices and workers are factored in”.
These challenges include:
- Difficulty understanding which systems require patches and which are up to date
- Having a manual patch management process which is highly inefficient and error-prone.
- The impact of reduced network visibility and the inability to tell which devices are compliant with patch requirements
- How to minimize downtime by poorly managing patch deployment
- How to avoid constantly responding to incidents because of the lack of a managed patch management process.
The result is that many organizations are having a hard time trying to implement proper security practices, including comprehensive patch management
Try us out for 30 days, risk-free
It has never been easier to get the kind of IT support services you deserve at your own pace. No pressure.