Patch management systems

What Is Patch Management?

Effective patch management helps safeguard your business from known exploits and unauthorized access, without sacrificing productivity.1 2

Patch Management Basics:

  • Patch management is the practice of deploying firmware, driver, operating system (OS), and application updates to your computing endpoints.

  • Patch management is critical to keeping systems updated, reducing attack surfaces, and ensuring employee productivity.

  • Remote management capabilities available on the Intel vPro® platform can help simplify patch management and support remote workforces.

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What Is Patch Management?

Patch management is the process of applying updates to software, drivers, and firmware to protect against vulnerabilities. Effective patch management also helps ensure the best operating performance of systems, boosting productivity.

Whether it’s an employee laptop or userless PC-based device, such as a kiosk or digital signage, all systems need to be secured. The risks of ignoring patch management can include exposing your business to leaks and breaches, loss of productivity, and loss of reputation.

Benefits: Why Is Patch Management Important?

The ultimate goal of patch management is to protect your endpoints from hackers and keep your systems running in top-notch shape. But patch management also confers a number of other benefits:

  • Promote productivity within the organization. Viewing patch management as a trade-off against productivity is a common misconception. Software that is well-managed with up-to-date patches works better and can help boost employee productivity.
  • Help lower the cost of device lifecycle management and repair. The office is everywhere, and businesses have had to pivot quickly to support a highly dispersed workforce. Remote management tools extend the abilities of IT, lowering the need for costly hardware shipments or truck rolls.
  • Help meet laws, regulations, and compliance standards. Many businesses must satisfy local or federal regulations in protecting data. These may include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for patient records, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for personal information collected during customer interactions, and similar regulations.

Software that is well-managed with up-to-date patches works better and can help boost employee productivity.

Patch Management Best Practices

Here are a few steps that IT admins can take to lead patch management best practices in their organization:

  • Know that patch management is more than just updating the operating system (OS) and applications. Patch management extends to updating your hardware’s firmware and drivers. Threats to the full computing stack do exist, and Intel is taking an active role in helping you mitigate these vulnerabilities. Industry leadership is key, as Intel works directly with OEMs, software vendors, and operating system partners to ensure that firmware updates are incorporated into larger software patch deployments.
  • Routinize patch management. Make your patch management cycles known and predictable to your entire organization. With an established cadence, users can prepare for a patch cycle accordingly and lessen the impact it has on their productivity.
  • Patch in batches. This is also known as conducting a “soft launch” or “sandbox testing.” It is considered good practice to launch a patch to a small segment of users (around 5 percent) and evaluate the effects before a broad-scale launch to your entire user base.
  • Understand who is responsible for patch management. It’s typically the responsibility of the software or system provider to patch a known vulnerability. IT managers must ensure patches provided by OEMs and software vendors are deployed across the business network of systems and devices. At smaller businesses, patch management usually falls into the hands of the individual user. Most software is programmed to notify a user that it needs to be updated. It may even have the ability to update itself automatically at a prescheduled time.
  • Scale deployments with patch management systems. A patch management system is software specifically designed to help IT departments orchestrate and track patch versioning and deployments across a network. PCs built on Intel vPro® feature integration with Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM) to enable remote management features for business-class fleet control. This helps extend patch management capabilities and increases the availability of endpoint devices for updating.

Remote Management with Intel vPro®

PCs built on Intel vPro® Enterprise for Windows OS deliver a suite of features designed for business. They bring together high performance, hardware-enhanced security features, remote management capabilities, and PC fleet stability.

Intel® Active Management Technology, exclusive to Intel vPro® Enterprise for Windows OS, offers a host of features to bolster patch management. IT departments can use the Alarm Clock feature to wake devices at scheduled times to apply patches, or verify upgrades through remote access using Keyboard, Video, Mouse (KVM) control. Storage redirection also enables IT technicians to apply updates and remediation through a mounted image file over the network, which simulates booting to a disk or USB flash drive on the endpoint device. These tools help save businesses costly trips to return compromised devices for in-person repair.

Remote work is here to stay, and businesses that want to remain flexible will need to plan for device patching and risk management both inside and outside the corporate firewall. Intel® Endpoint Management Assistant (Intel® EMA) extends the capabilities of Intel® AMT by helping provide a remote connection to devices on Intel vPro® via the cloud.

Patch Management Is Critical to IT

Patch management is more benefit than burden. Having greater access and control over your devices, with the ability to patch and repair remotely, ultimately lends flexibility to your IT department and your business. While a lot of hazards are out there in the form of hackers and data thieves, patch management can help keep your business running smoothly.

FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

Zero-day exploits are vulnerabilities in your software or firmware that you have not yet discovered. Once you become aware of a vulnerability or exploit, you may use patch management to remove it.

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In most businesses, the IT department will be responsible for keeping devices patched with updates provided by OEMs and software vendors. In smaller businesses, individual users may need to install their own patches.