Everyone in a business has set responsibilities that they need to fulfill, one major one being proper patch management. A failure to uphold this responsibility could have serious consequences, including the very real potential of a security breach. It could be argued, in fact, that if you aren’t patching your systems, you’re inviting cyber criminals in.
A Ponemon Institute study found that, despite increased awareness and investment in cybersecurity, 60 percent of breach victims were compromised via known vulnerabilities for which a patch was already available. Approximately 37 percent of the breached organizations surveyed didn’t even scan for missing vulnerabilities, leaving them with no clear picture of their own risk exposure.
It is pretty obvious that this isn’t an ideal situation.
Patch Mismanagement Isn’t a New Problem
You may recall the WannaCry and NotPetya attacks that created a significant stir in 2017. Technically speaking, these attacks shouldn’t have been nearly as newsworthy as they were, as the vulnerability they relied on (the EternalBlue exploit) had been patched by Microsoft two months before WannaCry struck.
Unfortunately, the responsibility for this falls squarely on the organizations that were ultimately affected by these attacks and the fact that patches simply aren’t being applied as they should be to these businesses’ endpoints. All it takes to create a sufficient vulnerability is a single device that hasn’t been properly updated.
How Can This Be Improved?
There are a few practices that you can endorse in your business to ensure that your patches remain well-managed.
Have a Patch Management Policy
Let me ask you something: would you rather an emerging cyber threat catch you off guard and force your team to scramble applying a patch you just found out about, or would you rather have a strategy laid out ahead of time so your team can efficiently test and apply the needed patches when they are published?
A patch management policy allows you to accomplish the obviously preferable second scenario, outlining processes and responsibilities so that everyone knows what they need to do, and when they need to do it. As a result, your patch management becomes much, much simpler.
Test Your Patches
While properly patching your solutions is serious business, you need to go about it in a collected way. Shooting from the hip (or in other words, just deploying the patch and forgetting it) could potentially create some problems with your other components or solutions. Instead, test new patches as much as you are able, and if you don’t have the resources to do that, roll out the patch gradually to help catch and minimize the damage done by any issues.
Leverage Automation
Automation can help with the efficacy of many business IT processes, and your patch management is no exception. Some patch management tools offer automation capabilities built in that allow you to cover more of your bases with less worry on your team’s part.
Remember, Time is of the Essence
Let’s look behind the curtain for a moment: the developers of your IT solutions and hackers are always in a race, developers to secure the solutions they have created against threats, and hackers to find new methods of getting attacks in. As a business that uses these solutions and should be trying to avoid threats, promptly patching should be a priority.
Stop Treating Patches as an Afterthought: Your Security Depends on It
When it all boils down to it, proper patch management is just one facet of a complete IT security strategy. Vulnerabilities don’t wait for a convenient window, and cyber criminals act fast once a known weakness is publicly disclosed. A structured, consistently applied patch cycle is the difference between staying ahead of threats and explaining a breach after the fact.
WheelHouse IT helps businesses identify and address security gaps, keeping your data and operations protected against evolving threats. Start with a free network risk assessment to see exactly where your vulnerabilities stand, then let our team build a managed security plan tailored to your business.
Ready to get started? Call our South Florida office at (954) 474-2204 or our New York office at (516) 536-5006. You can also contact us online to connect with our team.
