What is Patch Management? Patch management is a strategy for systems management that involves acquiring, testing, and installing multiple patches (code changes) to an administered computer system. This intervention enables systems to stay updated on existing patches, and helps also IT teams determine which patches are the appropriate ones.

As a part of change management, patch management aims to implement strategies for effecting change, controlling change and adapting to change. In other words it serves to keep IT infrastructure patching up to date by ensuring that patches are installed properly, testing systems after installation, and documenting all associated procedures.

Do you need patch management?

Patch management is both a practical and legal requirement for most companies to handle upgrades for software applications and technologies. Because many of the patches work for the sake of cyber security, it is vital to detect and fix problems with software.

Patch management may both apply to the internal endeavors of programming organizations to eliminate problems, and is also used to analyze existing programs for any potential risks. Patch management tools can scan systems to see potential requirements for updates to maintain cyber security. Any delays in patch management may welcome dangerous vulnerabilities and invite attackers to your network.

How to practice patch management?

Patch management requires 4 basic steps to take: assessment, analysis, application, and assurance. At the beginning of the process, team is expected to work on identification of relevant vulnerabilities and updates. Patches that may create a risk are detected and analyzed in the second step. Analysis of the risk assessment is evaluated to determine the full scope of the rollout and develop a remediation strategy. The next phase is the application of the strategy: the determined updates are completed. And the strategy should provide a continuous improvement through assurance step.

Conclusion

Effective patch management process requires a combination of automation and best practices. Manual patch management can be inefficient for a secure system. We, as Black Kite, collect details related to the version number of your system and software from internet-wide scanner and convert them into the corresponding common platform enumeration and correlate them with NIST NVD and MITRE CVSS databases to detect and approximate any unmitigated known vulnerabilities. See our Threat & Vulnerability Orchestration product to get more informed of what we can do for you.