Auto Patching Software
Argelia Long
Windows Autopatch is a cloud service that automates Windows, Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft Teams updates to improve security and productivity across your organization.
Rather than maintaining complex digital infrastructure, businesses want to focus on what makes them unique and successful. Windows Autopatch offers a solution to some of the challenges facing businesses and their people today:
Windows Autopatch helps you minimize the involvement of your scarce IT resources in the planning and deployment of updates for Windows, Microsoft 365 Apps, Microsoft Edge or Teams. Windows Autopatch uses careful rollout sequences and communicates with you throughout the release, allowing your IT Admins can focus on other activities and tasks.
The goal of Windows Autopatch is to deliver software updates to registered devices; the service frees up IT and minimizes disruptions to your end users. Once a device is registered with the service, Windows Autopatch takes on several areas of management:
For each management area, there's a set of eligibility requirements that determine if the device receives that specific update. An example of an eligibility criteria is that the device must have access to the required network endpoints for the Windows update. It's your responsibility to ensure that devices are meeting eligibility requirements for each management area.
To determine if we're meeting our service level objectives, all eligible devices are labeled as either "Healthy" or "Unhealthy". Healthy devices are meeting the eligibility requirements for that management area and unhealthy devices aren't. If Windows Autopatch falls below any service level objective for a management area, an incident is raised. Then, we bring the service back into compliance.
Windows Autopatch monitors in-progress updates. Depending on the criticality of the update, the service may decide to expedite the update. If we detect an issue during release, we may pause or roll back the update. Since each management area has a different monitoring and update control capabilities, you review the documentation for each area to familiarize yourself with the service.
Then, today I wake up 4AM in my timezone (EST) and learn that a Crowdstrike Falcon (installed on hundreds of millions of computers around the world, half of the Fortune 500) update has brought down or interrupted businesses globally and entire industries (MSN). Planes and trains are grounded, news organizations are impacted, financial service lines are down, and entire industries disrupted. As of the moment I am writing this, there are still severe disruptions around the world.
This is basically the worst-case scenario that my quick and auto-patching recommendations are always countered by.
The vendor usually has the bug fix ready to go within hours to one day, and it is pushed to the impacted customers (if possible). In general, impacted organizations and industries have one day of direct operational impact. They (both the vendor and impacted customers) then spend additional time doing additional clean-up and recovery. No one is blaming the impacted companies or organizations. They were doing what they were told to do. Few organizations are getting sued beyond the vendor who caused the problem in the first place.
In short, not patching easily seems to have far wider financial, legal, and reputational impact for a victim organization. A buggy update cause operational interruption, but those consequences rarely come close to what a ransomware event does. In a ransomware event, the victim gets blamed. In a software update incident, the software vendor gets blamed.
Patch canary systems first. If they come up and run their services without error on it goes.
takes about 30 minuites for preproduction to patch and come back up fully. So a 30 minuite lead time seems acceptable risk to me.
Anything OS or Security related is high impact, but also high risk. These patches are where we focus most effort to test ahead of rolling into production. Test group for WSUS before rolling out to everyone/everything.
Moving from Media Composer to Premiere, one of the things I miss most is the simplicity of switching activated tracks and having the source patching follow automatically. I've tried a few things, but there doesn't seem to be such a solution within CC17. Hoping I'm wrong tho! Thanks in advance for any guidance!
Sorry, difficult to explain. In Media Composer, if you change the track you want to insert or overwrite a clip on to, when you select the clip by highlighting the track number to the left of the timeline, the source patch follows that selection automatically. The way Premiere does it, not only do I have to select the track I want to drop the clip on to, I have to change the source patch to that same track manually. Uugghhh. Hope that's a better description! Thanks!
The way Premiere does it, not only do I have to select the track I want to drop the clip on to, I have to change the source patch to that same track manually. Uugghhh. Hope that's a better description! Thanks!
The solution is to go to adobe.com/go/wish and ask for 'auto-patching like Avid' - the more asking for it the more chance we have of getting it. I don't think you need to be any more erudite than that - there have been plenty of folks requesting it.
(It would probably require a major rethink of their patching though, as the source side always overwrites the record side, regardless of track selection on the record side. Whilst that is annoying at times, I did find that I mssed it today, when I was back on Avid!)
Patch deployment is a crucial step to secure your digital assets and cyber footprint. While manually patching systems can be a redundant task, especially for enterprises with a large number of endpoints, this can swiftly be streamlined with automated patch management.
Automated patch management (or automated patching) refers to the automation of the entire patch management process right from scanning all the systems in the network to detect the missing patches, testing the patches on a test group of systems, deploying them to the required systems and providing periodic updates and reports on the patch deployment status.
With an automated patch management software, you can streamline this entire process. Not only does this bolster the security of the network but also ensures proper utilization of resources, and conserves crucial time spent on manual patching of systems.
Unfortunately, for every organization across the world, irrespective of their size, cyber-attacks show no signs of receding. Enterprises across the globe could have prevented various remote work-targeted cyber attacks and ransomware incidents if they had a patch management solution that catered to remote machines in place and could patch their machines regularly.
As per a recent report, "68% of [ransomware]-impacted organizations did not have an effective vulnerability and patch management process, and a high dependence on manual processes versus automated patching led to critical openings."
Moreover, the lack of automated patching often creates loopholes in the enterprise networks, that act as a sweet spot for vulnerabilities to creep in, allowing threat actors to exploit the network security.
For enterprises of any size, the most effective step to improve their security posture is to consistently patch both their OSs and applications by incorporating patch automation. Let us understand how auto patching can further strengthen network security.
With vulnerabilities on a constant rise, it is crucial to have a constant overwatch on your network's endpoints. By leveraging patch automation, you can be top of your patching game with real-time detection of software vulnerabilities, across all endpoints in your network.
As enterprises grow, so does their cyber footprint. Inadvertently, this growth makes it harder to secure the network from cyber threats. An automated patch management software ensures that patches are deployed to all the endpoints in the network, regardless of the network's size or geographical location of the systems.
Deploying patches to hundreds of systems is undoubtedly a redundant task. On top of that, ensuring the installation of patches to the multitude of applications and operating systems is yet another daunting task.
While a manual error can be fatal to the organization's network security, it can be easily prevented by leveraging automated patching methods. This also ensures better utilization of resources across the organization.
With an automated patching workflow in place, organizations can drastically benefit from the advanced deployment mechanism. An automated patch management software ensures maximum results and accuracy, and minimum overhead costs.
Modern-day patch management solutions such as Patch Manager Plus offer a plethora of features to simplify the patch management process. From automated patch management to customized deployment templates, and integration with third-party solutions, rest assured, this solution will guard your network against cyber threats.
One of the major benefits of using an automated patch management software such as Patch Manager Plus is the real-time scanning of the network. This ensures that the missing patches and software vulnerabilities are detected, irrespective of the number of endpoints, operating systems, or applications being used.
Be it Windows, Mac, or Linux - Patch Manager Plus supports patch deployment for all three operating systems and eight different Linux flavors. In addition, you can also configure auto patching for over 850 third-party applications.
This greatly reduces IT overhead and allows IT admins in the enterprise to focus on other aspects of security, instead of relying on manually performing patch management across the operating systems and applications.
With hybrid work becoming increasingly popular, it's imperative that enterprise employees will be based across the globe. While it can be difficult to patch systems located across the world, it can be streamlined through an automated patch management process.