Patch management is the practice of keeping software up to date through software updates. The updates, called patches, are necessary to fix software bugs and vulnerabilities, which is essential to ensuring system uptime and protecting from cyberthreats and vulnerabilities.
Fixing bugs ensures that your system works as intended. Bugs are errors in software programming that cause the software to produce adverse results. This can result in error messages, improperly treated data, and many other aberrations from normal software operations. Fixing vulnerabilities ensures that cyber attackers can’t use your software for malicious purposes.
Patch management is a systematic approach to keeping your software up to date. While it is theoretically possible to make a list of all your software and routinely check each manually for updates, it’s certainly not practical for most businesses. Instead, businesses rely on automated patch management solutions. These solutions discover your software systems and keeps them up to date automatically.
Patch Management Process
Wouldn’t it be nice if it were as simple as installing a patch management software and pressing a button? Unfortunately, the reality is somewhat more complicated. Since patches make changes to your software systems, care must be taken when choosing to install a software patch. Here are some steps to take when it comes to creating your own patching plan:
- Inventory all of your IT assets. This will likely be very time consuming to get started, and probably sounds daunting. However, once you have your inventory in hand, maintaining it is pretty easy. Every month or quarter, you should ensure that your inventory is up to date, adding or removing items as necessary.
- Streamline your IT stack. Standardizing your IT infrastructure by minimizing the variety of software and hardware that you use makes patch management simpler, and strategically deciding on single systems saves you time which saves your organization money.
- Prioritize your IT assets. Decide which assets are critical, such as your antivirus, firewall, and intrusion prevention system. Develop a patching policy with which you check these critical assets for updates and ensure that it is more frequent than the rest of your IT stack.
- Itemize and classify known risks. Not every security risk requires a mitigation strategy. And it will be up to a cost benefit analysis to determine which ones to use. But secured or not, you should keep a list of security risks and measures taken to remediate them. This list should be updated regularly.
- Test the patches. Because patches ultimately change how IT assets work, you should test them before applying them to your entire IT stack. Apply patches to a small sampling of your IT assets to determine whether they can withstand your operations.
- Apply the patches. Once you are sure that the patches can be installed without disrupting your operations, install them as soon as possible. Cybercriminals often monitor software patches to exploit out-of-date software.
Patch Management Best Practices
It’s easy for a company to say that they will implement an efficient management policy for these tools, but what does it look like? Here are some best practices to help systematize your approach to security patches:
- Set clear expectations. Patches require someone (or something) to install them. Ensuring that your team is doing its part to keep your software updated is the first line of defense against vulnerability exploits.
- Implement regular scans. You should regularly scan your systems for updates. It’s best to approach scheduling on the basis of asset type, rather than assuming to just check everything.
- Prioritize critical assets. Things like your anti-virus, firewall, and intrusion prevention system should be updated more frequently than the rest of your IT assets, preferably at least once a day.
- Consult with a professional. There are a variety of options you have when it comes to cybersecurity consulting
As you can see, beginning to solve these issues is daunting, but taking the first step towards regularly keeping up with your software could save you from attacks down the line.