What is an automated patch update service?

Our industry-leading patch management operation team monitors key sources of patch intelligence—including Microsoft, Microsoft Security Bulletin, application vendors, CVE, automated crawler systems, and more—to identify the updates relevant for your environment.

Automatic system discovery

Provides a real-time view of your network via automatic discovery of all managed endpoints to identify installed and/or missing security patches and detect vulnerabilities.

Prioritization and scheduling

Prioritize patch deployment based on severity, vendor, or type, and automate scheduling for critical updates to be run daily while all others are implemented during regular maintenance windows.

Installation can be scheduled by time, computer, group, or user-defined collections of computers, or it can be triggered on demand—and control over schedules and reboot scenarios helps minimize downtime.

Track and report on all endpoint patch policies, network status changes, applied and/or missing patches, and any failed deployment attempts.

Every application can be tracked and patched over the network in real time, providing visibility into global patch inventory with sophisticated network status and health reports.

Maintain patch consistency on the schedule you configure to ensure ongoing compliance for the entire enterprise.

Although ITarian performs extensive and deep testing, you can run your own tests to approve patches either one at a time or in bulk.

You need a patch management solution for proper patch management. But what are the benefits of automating patch management for these companies?

1. Security

Security is the most obvious reason as to why companies would want to have an automated patch management solution in place. One of the main reasons why software vendors release new patches is to fix security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious software or people intending to damage the IT systems or network.

Applying security patches in a timely fashion highly reduces the risk of having a security breach and all the related problems that come with it, like data theft, data loss, reputations issues or even legal penalties.

2. Company Productivity

An efficient system which deploys patches network wide helps to improve the productivity of the company in many ways. Often patches come with performance improvements for the products they apply to, or fix crashes. Helping employees get rid of these issues will lead to a productivity boost. The improved security also helps productivity. In the majority of cases the worst effect of malware is not the stealing of company sensitive data, but rather the downtime that badly affects productivity. The effect varies from congested networks or slowed down systems because of malware activity, to breakdowns of business critical applications and to systems which are totally compromised and need to be reinstalled from scratch.

3. IT Department Productivity

Productivity gain is easily measured within the IT department. You just need to ascertain how many people and working hours are required to patch the systems manually, and how much you save by using software that automates the process. In fact, for companies that have more than 20-25 computers in their network, the headaches and time required to perform manual patching are so high that, if the company does not have a solution to automate patch management, they probably do not do it at all or it is limited to critical servers only.

4. Compliancy

Recently compliancy has become an important driver for companies to implement a patch management solution. There are more and more laws and regulations that are imposing security best practices on companies and having the systems fully patched is one of the most important security rules.

Government institutions, companies offering financial services and healthcare organizations are among the most affected by these regulations, but the trend is that all companies will need to be secure enough to be able to protect the privacy and data of their employees, customer and partners.

Here is a list with some of the most important standards related to IT infrastructure security: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLB/GLBA), Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Government Connect Secure Extranet – Code of Connection (GCSx CoCo).

Failure to comply can result in losing opportunities, incurring legal and financial penalties or even losing your business.

5. Keep Up with New Features

Patches can contain new features, adding new functionality or extending support for additional platforms. For organizations this often translates into opportunities to improve or extend their services.

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What is automated patch update?

The Automated Patch Deployment enables you to automate A to Z of your patch management process—From synchronizing the vulnerability database, scanning all machines in the network to detect missing patches, deploying the missing patches and also providing periodic updates on patch deployment status.

What is the meaning of patch update?

A patch is a software update for an existing application or operating system to resolve bugs (errors) or vulnerabilities.

Why is automated patching important?

The main reason why organizations implement an automated patch management system is to strengthen security. Many organizations put off patching since it can be complex and time-consuming, but doing so can have serious consequences.

What is the difference between a patch and an update?

While general software updates can include lots of different features, patches are updates that address specific vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities are “holes” or weaknesses in the security of a software program or operating system.