Learn about PurpleSec’s fully managed vulnerability management services.
Author: Jason Firch, MBA / Last Updated: 03/23/2023
Reviewed By: Josh Allen & Michael Swanagan, CISSP, CISA, CISM
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You can automate your patch management by selecting the right patch management tool that best suits your organization’s needs and configuring its automatic patching settings. Establishing deployment schedules, tracking and measuring success with KPIs, and continuously improving your vulnerability management program are also important components of an effective patch management program. Automating patch management saves time for IT and security teams and improves visibility and control over your IT environment.
What You’ll Learn
Automated patching offers several benefits that contribute to a more secure and efficient IT environment:
When comparing manual and automatic patching processes, it’s essential to consider their respective pros and cons, as each approach has unique advantages and drawbacks depending on the organization’s size, resources, and specific needs.
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Deciding when to automate patch management involves evaluating your organization’s current situation, needs, and goals.
Here are some key scenarios indicating that it’s time to consider automating patch management:Â
If your organization lacks the necessary in-house IT security expertise or resources, automating patch management can help bridge the gap.
Automated solutions streamline security operations, reducing the burden on your existing IT staff and ensuring that your systems are consistently updated and protected from vulnerabilities.
Organizations with a large number of software applications and frequent patch releases can quickly become overwhelmed by the volume of updates.
Automating patch management allows your organization to keep up with the pace of updates and ensure that all software is patched promptly and consistently, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities being exploited.
As organizations grow and adopt new technologies, their IT infrastructure becomes more complex. This can make it challenging to manage and maintain software patches effectively.
Automated patch management can simplify the process, ensuring that patches are applied consistently across your entire IT infrastructure, even as it continues to evolve.
Reducing the time it takes to remediate vulnerabilities can significantly limit the damage caused by a security breach.
Automated patch management helps organizations streamline the process of identifying, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities. This faster remediation time can improve your organization’s overall cybersecurity posture and minimize the impact of security incidents.
Organizations subject to industry regulations or compliance standards may find it challenging to keep up with the necessary patch management processes.
Automated patch management can help ensure that your organization meets these requirements by:
Automated patching offers several features that make it an attractive option for organizations seeking to improve their patch management processes:
Automated patching follows a streamlined process that typically includes the following steps:
The auto patch feature can automatically apply critical updates based on the organization’s risk profile.
This ensures that high-priority vulnerabilities are addressed promptly, minimizing the risk of exploitation.
It’s important to note that CVSS scores and criticality alone aren’t always reliable indicators of a patch’s importance.
Even low-severity vulnerabilities can be chained together to compromise a system.
Therefore, organizations should prioritize patches that address exploitable vulnerabilities rather than focusing solely on their severity ratings.
Evaluate various patch management tools based on their features, compatibility with your organization’s systems, and pricing.
Select a tool that best suits your organization’s needs and offers a balance between functionality and affordability.
Here are some popular patch management tools and when they might be appropriate for your organization:
Once you’ve chosen a patch management tool, configure the automatic patching settings to meet your organization’s requirements.
This includes setting up patch sources, deployment schedules, and rollback options in case a patch causes issues.
The configuration process will vary depending on the tool you’ve selected, but here are some general steps to follow:
Scheduling regular patch deployments and monitoring their progress are essential components of an effective patch management program.
By staying on top of patch deployment, you can maintain visibility into your organization’s efforts and make data-driven decisions to improve security.
Automating patch management comes with its own set of challenges that organizations need to address:
It enables IT departments to automate the process of updating software in a timely and secure manner, ensuring that all systems are protected against vulnerabilities and security threats.
One of the main challenges in automating patch management is ensuring compatibility between patches and existing software.
Conflicts can lead to system instability or performance issues.
To mitigate this risk, organizations should perform thorough testing in a controlled environment before deploying patches to production systems.
This allows IT teams to identify and address potential issues before they impact the wider organization.
Custom and legacy applications often require special attention when it comes to patch management, as they may not be supported by standard patch management tools.
Organizations must carefully consider the unique needs of these applications and may need to develop custom patching solutions or work with specialized vendors to ensure security updates are applied correctly and efficiently.
Efficient patch distribution requires careful consideration of network bandwidth and infrastructure to prevent bottlenecks and slowdowns.
Organizations should plan and schedule patch deployment to minimize the impact on network performance, especially during peak usage times.
In addition, they may need to invest in network upgrades or optimization solutions to support large-scale patch distribution.
Legacy systems that cannot be patched pose a significant risk to an organization’s security.
In such cases, alternative security measures should be implemented, such as isolating the systems from the rest of the network, implementing additional monitoring solutions, or considering replacement or upgrade options to more modern and secure systems.
PurpleSec provides a cloud-native automated patching service that enables organizations to manage and remediate vulnerabilities quickly and efficiently.
With cutting-edge automation and AI-powered technologies, PurpleSec’s solution delivers end-to-end detection and remediation, making it easy for SecOps and ITOps to coordinate from the moment a vulnerability is discovered until it’s remediated.
PurpleSec offers a virtual machine package or security device with a simple one-day setup process to streamline the deployment of its patch management services. This allows organizations to get started quickly with minimal requirements for implementation, configuration, or training.
PurpleSec’s patch management services integrate seamlessly with an organization’s existing technology stack, making it easy to configure and automate as much or as little of the vulnerability management lifecycle as needed. This allows organizations to prioritize and mitigate vulnerabilities at scale across highly distributed architectures.
PurpleSec’s patch management services provide continuous monitoring, automated vulnerability patching, risk-based prioritization, streamlined processes and procedures, and direct access to defensive security experts.
With a framework to proactively identify, classify, remediate, and mitigate vulnerabilities in applications or IT infrastructure, PurpleSec helps organizations reduce risk and maximize the ROI of their security initiatives.
PurpleSec’s patch management services offer an expert-defined remediation library that immediately delivers the right fix for any vulnerability to speed up risk remediation.
The platform automatically manages and analyzes vulnerabilities and risks in one place, eliminating the need for organizations to manually look up fixes or workarounds for each vulnerability.
This not only reduces the time and effort required for effective risk management but also ensures that vulnerabilities are fixed and critical cyber risks are addressed in a timely fashion.
PurpleSec’s patch management services are designed to evolve with an organization’s needs.
With customizable risk analytics and reporting, context-aware vulnerability prioritization, communication and collaboration with all departments, expert-defined remediation intelligence, and automated mitigation playbooks, PurpleSec enables organizations to streamline their vulnerability management programs and increase their security ROI.
Automating patch management is essential for organizations looking to enhance their cyber security posture in today’s complex and rapidly evolving threat landscape.
Organizations can significantly reduce the time and effort required to deploy patches by automating their patching processes.
However, this transition requires careful planning, selection of the right patch management tool, and addressing challenges such as compatibility, custom and legacy applications, network considerations, and dealing with legacy systems.
By implementing best practices and a comprehensive approach to vulnerability management, organizations can stay ahead of emerging threats and ensure the ongoing security of their systems and data.
Jason is a proven marketing leader, veteran IT operations manager, and cyber security enthusiast with 10 years of experience. He is the co-founder and CEO/CMO of PurpleSec.
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