With cybercriminals constantly probing digital defences and deploying new tactics to overcome them, new software vulnerabilities develop. This makes patch management an important part of your cyber security strategy, no matter how large or small your organisation may be.
Apart from this, patches can be introduced to add new features, iron out glitches, or improve overall software performance. So, patch management also helps you to benefit from the best your systems have to offer.
To help you understand patch management, we will provide answers to common questions beginning with the basics and working our way up to more advanced components of patch management.
What is Patch Management?
Patch management is a process of identifying, testing, and installing updates (patches) to your software and systems. As noted, they are often security updates, but may also be there to improve overall performance. While the latter may be nice, the former are necessary, since missed updates could expose your systems to attack.
As a simple example, Microsoft releases a security update. Your IT team must make sure that all devices using Microsoft’s software are updated. However, patch management involves far more than simply installing updates. Your IT team must:
- Discover new patches that providers are recommending
- Evaluate the purpose and relevance of each patch
- Test each patch to check whether it has potential for causing disruption
- Deploy patches consistently
- Document their work as evidence of compliance
All these activities are part of the patch management process, and your team must undertake them in a disciplined and systematic way to avoid unintended consequences.
Why is Patch Management So Important?
Patch management is important on a number of levels. These include:
Security
Cyber security professionals widely recognise unpatched systems as a major contributing factor in cyber attacks, with some citing them as the cause of up to 60 percent of successful attacks.
Compliance
In the UK, compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act (2018) is required. It calls on organisations to take all the reasonable steps they can to protect people’s data. Failure to comply not only destroys reputations but can also lead to severe penalties, usually hefty fines. Applying patches is a very basic but important part of compliance.
System Stability
Sometimes, companies release new patches because of performance issues or bugs that may lead to downtime. Failing to install them may lead to costly system failures that frustrate employees and clients and impact your organisation’s reputation.
Operational Efficiency
Good patch management ensures that all your systems are on the same page, using the same software and firmware. This reduces IT complexity and can help to prevent unexpected failures.
Patch Management vs. Vulnerability Management
Failing to implement effective patch management can introduce vulnerabilities, but it is not the sum total of vulnerability management. Patch management focuses on vendor-released fixes, while vulnerability management has a much broader scope. For example, it includes remedying configuration errors, dealing with outdated protocols, implementing strong access protections, and more.
Steps to Implement Patch Management
As you may have guessed from our discussion so far, simply implementing patches willy-nilly is not the way to go. Before making any changes to your systems, your IT team must follow a series of steps so that patches are implemented safely, consistently, and with minimal disruption to operations. These include:
Asset Discovery
It is important for your IT team to build a full inventory of hardware, operating systems, and applications, and understand their interdependencies. Although this may seem extremely obvious, so-called “shadow IT,” long-forgotten systems, are often the weakest link.
Patch Identification
Your IT team needs to remain on top of what your vendors are doing, looking for announcements, security advisory alerts, and newly-released patches. They will likely use software and automations. For example, they may use specialised patch management software.
Prioritising Risks
Not all patches are equally urgent. Some may just be minor feature updates, while others could be critical security updates. Your IT specialists must consider impacts, risk exposure, and compliance requirements to prioritise the most important patches.
Testing
You cannot afford to risk downtime affecting critical systems because of compatibility issues. To avoid unforeseen impacts, your team will deploy patches in a test environment first. Once they are confident that installing patches will not have negative effects, they can move on to the next step.
Deployment
The rollout must be well-managed, too. It must be a controlled process, and patches must be installed in all the relevant places. Automation tools help them to do this at scale, minimising disruption and achieving a comprehensive result.
Verification and Reporting
A task this crucial is never complete until your team has verified its results. That means making sure the patches have been applied successfully and generating audit trails to show compliance.
Your Patch Management Policy
A patch management policy not only indicates that a task must be done, but also indicates who is responsible and the procedures they should follow. Capture this in a formal document showing:
- The scope of the task in terms of systems, applications, and environments
- People’s roles in the process, their responsibilities, who they report to, and what they should report
- Timelines, particularly for critical updates. Keep these as short as possible without compromising the process
- Testing requirements that must be met before any patch is deployed
- Compliance requirements to align with regulations and audit standards
- Documentation requirements to track the process and promote accountability
This is no mere paper exercise. Your policy prevents inconsistency, assigns accountability, and shows how your team must demonstrate due diligence throughout the patch management process.
Patch Management Best Practices
Best practices help to make patch management more efficient, more effective, and limit disruption. You need not reinvent the wheel. These best practices may help you:
- Automate where you can. Save time and avoid errors using tools to streamline the implementation of updates.
- Prioritise critical systems and updates. Any update that helps to protect sensitive data is a priority. Your servers, databases, and the systems you use to access sensitive information must be updated before you consider other types of updates.
- Schedule to limit maintenance disruption: Set times outside peak hours to implement updates.
- Communicate with users: Let people who may be affected by system maintenance know what you are doing and when they may experience downtime.
- Track and report: Preserve logs and reports to show what has been done, identify any gaps, and demonstrate compliance.
- Actively seek information. Threats can develop very rapidly. Be aware of the latest threat intelligence and the availability of priority patches.
- Integrate with overall vulnerability management to avoid silos and inform incident response.
Patch Management Exception Process
Although you might want to implement patches right away, there are times when exceptions occur. During testing, your team may find that a patch interferes with a critical application, or they may find that downtime will have significant negative effects. Findings such as these trigger a patch management exception process.
It begins by formally documenting why it would not be possible to implement a patch within the normal timeframe. The next step is to compensate for the risk. You may apply more intensive monitoring, isolate a system, or restrict access.
However, you cannot leave it at that. Set deadlines for the resolution of the exception, keeping them as tight as possible to limit risk. Naturally, one cannot allow exceptions without approvals.
The cyber security team must know what they are up against, and top management must be aware of the risk, the reasons why it is unavoidable, and what will be done to eliminate or reduce it until the patch can be implemented.
Capacity Issues Plague Many Organisations, But There Are Solutions
The UK government reports that 44 percent of businesses lack people with the skills needed to perform the tasks its CyberEssentials scheme requires. It recommends outsourcing as a straightforward solution, but many businesses have failed to do so.
With AI-powered attacks increasingly posing a threat, Advantex believes that more than ever, businesses require round-the-clock IT monitoring and support. As providers of network and IT infrastructure solutions, we also offer a range of services, including patch management, in our managed IT services packages.
Whether you have IT professionals in need of additional support or would prefer a full suite of managed services from us, talk to us about your organisation’s needs. Avoid pitfalls like inadequate patch management and more with Advantex.
