How many times have you postponed a security update and told it to “remind me later” because you were busy? Proper patch management can help ensure your devices are updated promptly, so you don’t leave your systems vulnerable by missing an update. As such, a good security patch management policy is essential.
Patch management is critical in modern IT environments, and patch management policies should never be overlooked. With that in mind, it’s time to explore patch management policies, see how they enhance system security, and what you can do to facilitate effective patch management.
What is a Patch Management Policy?
A patch management policy is the process of regularly identifying and applying software updates and patches. This helps ensure that every device is up-to-date, closes security vulnerabilities, and keeps software running at peak efficiency.
A good patch management policy identifies what changes are made, who makes them, and when they’re made, including guidelines for prioritization, implementation, and documentation. With proper patch management, you can proactively address vulnerabilities and block cyber threats before they get a chance to strike.
Why is a Patch Management Policy Essential for Organizational Security?
Patch management policies are critical for organizational security and operational stability. A proper policy ensures you’re receiving critical updates immediately, including security patches, bug fixes, and QoL improvements, so your teams can work more efficiently and securely.
A well-defined IT patch management policy supports timely and efficient patch deployment, so you’re never leaving key updates waiting in the infinite loop of getting reminders and clicking “remind me later.” As a result, this also helps ensure you’re keeping up with your IT security compliance requirements.
How to Create a Patch Management Policy
If your business needs a patch management policy, there are some guidelines and best practices you can follow. These will help you ensure a smooth, efficient, and effective patch management policy:
Automation tools can help roll out and manage patches across large and distributed environments, alleviating much of your IT team’s workload and ensuring proper endpoint management.
Schedule regular updates so that you’re consistently and frequently checking for patches. This will help ensure you don’t miss a critical update.
Coordinate with stakeholders and create approval workflows to ensure patches are deployed at a convenient time. This will minimize any slowdowns or disruptions caused by updates.
Create a testing environment to test updates and validate patches. This helps ensure they don’t cause any unforeseen issues or interruptions before rolling out updates.
Prioritize patches so that those addressing critical vulnerabilities or providing significant improvements can be rolled out immediately.
Track and monitor your systems post-deployment to watch for any issues and ensure IT compliance across your endpoints.
9-Step Patch Management Policy Checklist for IT Security
When you’re designing a patch management policy, you don’t want to go in blind. Following these steps can help ensure your patch management policy is comprehensive and effective, so your systems remain secure and up-to-date:
1. Build a Comprehensive IT Asset Inventory
The first step to patch management is to understand your IT asset inventory. This includes your hardware, software, network components, and so forth – anything that may require patches and updates should be added to the inventory. This will help you ensure all your assets receive needed updates and identify potential vulnerabilities that require patching.
2. Maintain an Up-to-Date Patch Repository
When you have a lot of software and systems to track, it can be easy to fall behind on patches. Keeping a repository of all your updates, patches, and hotfixes helps ensure you’re not missing any updates, and your IT infrastructure management remains up-to-date and secure.
3. Use Risk-Based Prioritization for Patching
When you have multiple patches to deploy, not all of them can roll out at once. As such, it’s vital to know how to prioritize. Consider factors like: how severe the vulnerability is, what assets are affected, and the impact failing to update can have on your organization. This risk-based approach helps reduce potential damages and ensure you’re not missing the most critical updates.
4. Define and Enforce an Exclusion Policy for Patches
For all that’s been said about the importance of updates, there are still some patches you might want to skip. For instance, some patches may conflict with other software you use or create compatibility issues with your equipment. As such, it helps to have a policy that dictates what patches should be excluded, including the criteria that should be considered and how to review and approve exclusions.
5. Conduct Thorough Patch Testing Before Rollout
Similarly, it's important to understand how patches will impact your tools and systems. Testing patches in a controlled environment before deployment helps ensure they don’t introduce any new issues or unforeseen problems so you can roll out updates with confidence.
6. Establish a Strategic Patch Deployment Schedule
Deploying patches in the middle of the workday can cause disruptions, but waiting too long to roll them out can leave your systems vulnerable. Timing is everything, so it helps to create a patch deployment schedule that aligns with your operations and schedule. Coordinate with stakeholders to find a time that will have minimal disruptions when you deploy patch updates.
7. Track and Analyze the Patch Deployment Progress
Even when you automate your patch deployment, it still helps to monitor its progress. Tracking your deployment progress helps identify any issues or obstacles, ensuring a smoother rollout.
8. Develop and Review Patch Compliance Reports
Keeping your systems and security up-to-date is vital for IT compliance. Developing reports that provide an overview of your patch management process, deployed patches, and their effectiveness is helpful for compliance reports, which help measure your patch management process’s effectiveness and provide important KPIs during audits.
9. Implement Automated Patch Management Workflows
Automation is one of the most useful tools for patch management. This helps you efficiently deploy updates, reduce the risk of human error, and keep up with the latest patches while reducing the demand on your IT team. Automated patch management helps prioritize, deploy, and monitor patches, so you can keep your systems updated with less manual effort.
Key Benefits of Implementing an Effective Patch Management Policy
With all that said, what are the positive effects of patch management? Good patch management brings many benefits to organizations, including:
Improved security: Patches provide vital security updates that can close vulnerabilities and strengthen your protection against cyberattacks. As such, good security patch management policies help ensure your cybersecurity remains up to date.
Regulatory compliance: Businesses must comply with several regulations, which typically require them to remain up-to-date on the latest security features and updates. Patch management can help ensure that a company’s security remains at acceptable levels for regulations, including GDPR, SOC 2, FERPA, and HIPAA compliance.
Reduced downtime: Patch management policies can minimize downtime in multiple ways. First, ensuring security patches are up-to-date reduces the downtime caused by cyberattacks and technical errors. Secondly, well-planned policies can ensure updates are deployed at the most convenient times, reducing downtime caused by the installation process.
Operational efficiency: Good patch management policies help improve efficiency by quickly and effectively rolling out updates across endpoints and work environments. This lets organizations update multiple devices automatically and without interrupting work, keeping disruptions low and efficiency high.
How Splashtop Automates and Optimizes Patch Management Policies
When you have multiple devices to manage over remote and distributed environments, patch management can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are solutions like Splashtop that can help.
With Splashtop AEM (Autonomous Endpoint Management), you can support devices across your company with real-time patch management and roll-out updates as soon as they’re available. Splashtop AEM enables you to establish and enforce policies across endpoints, ensuring IT compliance and maintaining high security standards.
Additionally, Splashtop AEM lets you automate patch management and updates, so you can keep your patches up-to-date with ease while still having control over your deployments. You can schedule and execute tasks across multiple endpoints, keeping every device in your network updated and protected whenever a new patch rolls out.
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