Tag Archive for: IT Support Services

Why Does Patch Management Matter?

Simply put, patching is important because of IT governance. As a corporate IT department, you’re held responsible when viruses affect users or applications stop working. It becomes your problem to solve. Securing your organization’s end points against intrusion is your first line of defense. With an increasing number of users working while mobile, simply securing your network through firewalls doesn’t account for company data that’s been taken outside your network perimeter. Proper patching is the best start to securing those devices. Most IT professionals pay attention to security and patching their users’ systems, but how many have a well-honed patch management policy? Patch management is often seen as a trivial task by end users—simply click ‘update’. For administrators, there’s a lot more to it, and a proper policy is certainly not overkill. But what should a patch management policy include apart from deploying patches? Read on to learn how to implement patch management policies, processes and persistence.

1 – Policy

The first step in developing a patch management strategy is to develop a policy that outlines the who, what, how and when of patching your systems. This up-front planning enables you to be proactive instead of reactive. Proactive management anticipates problems in advance and develops policies to deal with them; reactive management adds layer upon layer of hastily thought-up solutions that get cobbled together using bits of string and glue. It’s easy to see which approach will unravel in the event of a crisis. The goal of patch management policy is to effectively identify and fix vulnerabilities. Once you’re notified of a critical weakness, you should immediately know who will deal with it, how it will deployed and how quickly it will be fixed. For example, a simple element of a patch management policy might be that critical or important patches should be applied first.

2 – Discovery

Information comes to you about a newly released patch meant to address a product defect or vulnerability. These notifications can originate from a number of places—LabTech, Automatic Updates, Microsoft’s Security Notification Service. It all depends on which tools you use to monitor and keep your systems up-to-date. In this chapter, we’ll talk about a number of 2 proven tools you can use to manage patching notifications.

3 – Persistence

Policies are useless and processes are futile unless you persist in applying them consistently. Network security requires constant vigilance, not only because new vulnerabilities and patches appear almost daily, but because new processes and tools are constantly being developed to handle the growing problem of keeping systems patched. Effective patch management has become a necessity in today’s information technology environments.

Reasons for this necessity are:

• The ongoing discovery of vulnerabilities in existing operating systems and applications

• The continuing threat of hackers developing applications that exploit those vulnerabilities

• Vendor requirements to patch vulnerabilities via the release of patches.

These points illustrate the need to constantly apply patches to your IT environments. Such a large task is best accomplished following a series of repeatable, automated best practices. Therefore, it’s important to look at patch management as a closed-loop process. It is a series of best practices that have to be repeated regularly on your networks to ensure protection from exposed vulnerabilities.

Patch Management requires:

– Regular rediscovery of systems that may potentially be affected

– Scanning those systems for vulnerabilities

– Downloading patches and patch definition databases

– Deploying patches to systems that need them

4 – Patching Resources

Microsoft updates arrive predictably on Patch Tuesday (the second Tuesday of every month), which means you can plan ahead for testing and deployment. You can get advance notice by subscribing to the security bulletin, which comes out three business days before the release and includes details of the updates. The following is a list of currently available resources you can use when augmenting your patch process, as well as some that can keep you informed of patch-related updates that fall outside the scope of Microsoft updates.

Microsoft Security TechCenter – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bb291012.aspx

SearchSecurity Patch News http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/resources/Security-Patch-Management

Oracle Critical Patch Updates and Security Alerts http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html

PatchManagement.org (Patch Mailing List) http://www.patchmanagement.org/

Patch My PC (third-party, free patching) http://www.patchmypc.net/

5 – Patching Tools

Client Management Platform Approving and deploying patches on individual machines is simply not scalable. As your organization grows, it is important to utilize a tool that can automate your patch management process, so your technicians aren’t bogged down with the mundane task of individually patching each machine. A client management platform with built-in patch management capabilities can help. When searching for the right tool, remember to look for one that enables you to:

-Identify, approve, update or ignore patches and hotfixes for one or multiple devices at a group level

-Define patch install windows for an individual device or a group of devices

-Schedule patch installation times and patch reboot times

-Create tickets for all successful patch install jobs

-Provide detailed reports of patch install jobs to your management team

 

Third-Party Patching Tools

It is important to ensure timely installation of patches, so security holes remain closed not only in the Windows operating system, but also in software products that are used on desktops and servers. A third-party patching tool such as App-Care or Ninite can be used for obtaining, testing and deploying updates to third-party applications. Be sure to look for a third-party patching tool that integrates seamlessly with your client management platform for increased automation and efficiency.

 

Summary

Patch management is a critical process in protecting your systems from known vulnerabilities and exploits that could result in your organization’s systems being compromised. Viruses and malware are just two examples of aggressors that take advantage of these weaknesses and can be especially destructive and difficult to correct. Patches correct bugs, flaws and provide enhancements, which can prevent potential user impact, improve user experience and save your technicians time researching and repairing issues that could have already been resolved or prevented with an existing update. Users generally understand that their systems need to be patched, but they often do not have the expertise to comfortably approve and install patches without help. Developing best practices to manage the risks associated with the approval and deployment of patches is critical to your IT department’s service offering.

 

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This article was provided by our partner Labtech

 

Patching is vital to securing systems from known vulnerabilities, but it’s also a risk that can bring down those systems if you deploy a bad patch. In order to maintain the proper risk balance you should focus on patches that close vulnerabilities.

Even once you establish your risk balance, you are continually under the threat of a CNN story about the latest vulnerability and the unexpected patch that must be deployed to close it. Building repeatable processes that solve this security/availability balance keeps your systems secure and keeps you ahead of emerging threats.

Here are four keys to expert patch management:

1) Solve for Third Party Applications

Hacking has evolved into an organized business looking for the fastest way to exploit as many systems as possible. Secunia’s 2014 Vulnerability Review calls out that 76% of vulnerabilities are related to third party applications, outnumbering Microsoft applications such as Office (16%) and Windows (8%).

2) Manage the 5%

The 95/5 rule is the theory that the majority of patches approved for deployment will apply to most of the systems you manage. The trick is identifying and managing the 5% of exceptions. Although it is tempting to handle patch approval on individual computers, building groups or policies to handle exceptions is the more scalable solution.

Your next step is to identify systems with unique patching requirements and apply exceptions to those systems. If you know a line of business application will fail if an MS-SQL service pack is installed, being able to identify a new system with the same line of business application and automatically deny that service pack avoids a potential service outage.

3) Save Time and Remove Clutter

Most organizations have default approval policies for common patch categories such as critical updates, security updates, language packs and drivers. Being able to automatically approve or deny patches based on category will reduce the number of patches you need to review each Patch Tuesday. With third party applications this becomes more critical as the release cycles for third party applications can reoccur randomly throughout the month.

4) Stage Patch Deployment

Blindly pushing patches to all systems without validation can be a recipe for mass disaster. Microsoft has had several patches in the past year that have had an adverse impact, forcing those that did not test to remove them or deal with the impact.

Patch staging is a process where you apply patch approval to a series of separate groups of systems. Patches are deployed to each group prior to moving on to the next group to validate their quality before releasing them to the majority of your systems. For example:

• Stage 1: A smaller number of trusted internal systems or lab systems
• Stage 2: A sample of production systems testing compatibility with line of business applications, while still limiting exposure
• Stage 3: Release to the rest of your managed systems

Once you are ready to install, avoid patching critical systems all at the same time. You can minimize outages by patching higher risk systems prior to internal systems, patching based on server role to solve for dependencies between servers, or by staggering deployment to different locations within the company. While staggering the deployment of patches to avoid outages, you must also balance the risk of systems that remain unpatched and vulnerable.

These patching best practices are meant for you to adopt and mold to fit your business. The policies you implement should solve for the requirements of your business and the systems you manage. Once you have defined your patching policies, implementing them on regular basis each month is the key to success.

 

 

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This article was provided by our partner Labtech who provide third party patch management tools to service providers.