Surviving Insecure IT: Effect Patch Management

A s we discussed in the last issue (“Introducing Insecure IT”), software developers are begin­ ning to make some headway in reducing IT system vulnerabili­ ties. But just as there will never be impenetrable armor, there will never be invulnerable software. In the battle between attackers and defenders, developers still make mistakes, and adversaries invent new ways to defeat the best safe­ guards. Consequently, enterprises need an effective patch manage­ ment mechanism to survive the insecure IT environment. Effective patch management is a systematic and repeatable patch distribution process for closing IT system vul­ nerabilities in an enterprise. It in­ volves pervasive system updates, including any or all the following: drivers, operating systems, scripts, applications, or data files. Patches usually originate from, and are supported by, IT product vendors. These vendors often use differ­ ent terminologies for patches— for example, Microsoft has nine different types of patches (secuSurviving Insecure IT: Effective Patch Management