Security Patch Management in It

Patch management is a very important part of any businesses IT infrastructure. When timely updates are not being applied to business systems they remain vulnerable to malicious attackers who may try to disrupt service, corrupt or destroy data, or steal critical business information not exclusive to customer data. Hackers often steal data which in-turn they use in an attempt to either profit from or harm the entity which they hacked. All software has vulnerabilities. Hackers work to identify those vulnerabilities and then to exploit them for their gain. On the other hand, companies’ IT departments work with software vendors to try and manage the risk that these vulnerabilities present. In doing so, their goal is to be a step ahead of the hackers and patch their business systems ahead of any malicious activity that might cause problems for the company.

It is easy to oversimplify how these hacker threats of known security issues can be thwarted; addressing known vulnerabilities may appear to be a simple process of identifying a security risk, going to the vendor’s website to download the patch and then apply it to the relevant servers . That scenario would be ideal but it does not reflect the true process which needs to take place before a security patch is installed. The reality of looking after a production environment requiring many servers to be patched is that you could tools like a Master Schedule to help with the patch release process. Numerous factors must be taken into account before patches are applied:

1. Before any patches are installed into a production environment they are researched and tested to ensure that they do not conflict with the existing applications. This takes expertise which would often be working on other projects (not idle) to be pulled off and reassigned to research the technical details of the patch. After researching the changes of a patch most organizations will install it on a test system to certify any patches before...