There are various methods to protect against unauthorized access to your company’s networks, and patch management is a simple way to address security vulnerabilities or bugs in the system.
Maintaining network security through updates and patches can improve your customers’ experience with their technology, and ensure your services remain valuable to the businesses that you serve. Additionally, patching is often required to maintain compatibility between integrated software tools as they independently evolve.
What is patch management?
Patch management is an application that managed service providers (MSPs) can utilize in daily operations aimed at vulnerability fixes to protect client systems from emerging threats with minimal effort through automated processes.
Through automated patch management, MSPs can proactively ensure systems are up-to-date while maintaining the security and stability of their clients’ networks. MSP patch management refers to the process of identifying, evaluating, testing, deploying, and monitoring software patches across various devices and systems.
Why is automated patch management essential for security?
Effective MSP patch management is significant in today’s cybersecurity landscape, as threat actors continue to search for vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to disrupt systems. Through regularly scheduled automated patch management, software and systems are updated to minimize the risk of security breaches and protect valuable data.
Automated patch management also optimizes resource usage as IT teams have extensive stacks of hardware and software to maintain. Through patch management, administrators can prioritize closing gaps based on severity so they can focus on fixing critical issues first.
According to the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023, system breaches cost organizations almost $4.45 million on average globally. Through patch management, organizations can reduce the financial damage caused by breaches and limit the productivity lost due to an outage. The financial costs of a security breach can be crippling for enterprises and can completely shutter smaller businesses. In addition to costs like incident response and legal fees, decreased customer retention rates and restoration of system infrastructures can add to an organization’s financial burden.
Automated patch management enables MSPs to maintain regulatory compliance. Through documentation of updates and risk mitigation, patch management activities can assist clients in meeting their compliance obligations, and remaining compliant with internal policies and procedures, along with external requirements imposed by government agencies, industry organizations, and stakeholders. Failing to comply with regulations can result in financial penalties, legal consequences, and reputational damage.
The key challenges of patch management for business
There are several key challenges of patch management that enterprises can run into. Without addressing these challenges, patch management may cause more issues for your enterprise than it solves.
The key challenges of patch management for business include:
- Managing patch dependencies: This refers to the situation where one patch requires the installation of another patch or software component to function properly. These situations can create a complex web of dependencies that should be carefully managed to ensure the successful deployment of patches.
- Patch testing and validation: This can be a time-consuming process so MSPs will need to strike a balance between testing patches and ensuring timely deployment to address critical vulnerabilities.
- Lack of IT inventory control: Some IT environments can be patched together in a shoddy fashion. When this happens, a lack of inventory management means there’s no running record of which devices are running on what software, leading to obvious problems when trying to patch dozens of different machines.
- Patch failures: These can cause downtime for organizations due to a failed download or corrupted file, human error, or some sort of compatibility issue. These failures not only impact the security posture of a client but can also impact the reputation of the service provider.
- Patch overload: The sheer volume of patches that might be available can cause difficulties with prioritization and deployment. Leveraging automated patch management tools that provide centralized patch management capabilities, streamlining the process, and allowing users to scale operations effectively can help to overcome this challenge.
How can MSPs streamline the patch management process?
MSPs can streamline the patch management process by implementing a robust patch management policy, which is a documented approach to handling patching as established by an organization or its IT team.
These policies allow an organization to roll out its patches efficiently and quickly. The steps involved include detecting which components in the system require a patch, prioritizing their updates, and validating the patches to ensure they’re compatible with the rest of the environment to minimize downtime.
Patch management policies should address and document the areas of detecting and scheduling; prioritization; testing; assignment of roles and point of contact; patch deployment; and tracking, monitoring, and reporting.
The tools MSPs need to offer managed patch management
After implementing a patch management policy and process, determining which tools and solutions are best for you as an MSP is critical. The right automated patch management tool can help save time as an MSP and for clients.
These tools perform tasks like scanning, monitoring, alerting, prioritizing, deploying, testing, and reporting with little to no manual intervention required. A few patch management service companies include:
Foresite Cybersecurity offers a comprehensive patch management solution designed to help businesses keep their networks.
Ivanti provides a cloud-based patch management solution helping organizations automate the process of keeping systems and applications up-to-date.
Kaseya Virtual Systems Administration provides a remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform designed to give IT professionals and MSPs the ability to remotely manage, monitor, and maintain their customers’ IT infrastructure from a single console.
NinjaOne offers a solution to patch endpoints based on time to deploy or based on other various categories.
ServiceNow offers a Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) solution and a vulnerability management service.
Syxsense offers a cloud-based IT management solution to enable businesses to identify, monitor, and manage all of their IT assets and endpoints in one centralized platform.
Bottom line: Patch management is tricky but worthwhile
Patch management is more of a benefit than a burden for MSPs and their clients. It provides greater access and control over devices given its ability to patch and repair remotely. The long-term value and advantages that patch management offers organizations are far more important than any possible drawbacks.
This gives organizations flexibility to IT departments and protects against evolving threats, from unauthorized access to data thieves. By cycling through patch management and repair regimes, organizations can reduce their threat exposure and chances of falling victim to costly data breaches.
Patch management is an essential part of maintaining a strong cybersecurity posture. Read more about the top cybersecurity innovations and major breaches from 2024 to better understand the landscape.