Pierluigi Paganini June 12, 2012

Patch management is one area where many IT organizations struggle. The operating systems vendors have done a good job with providing easy patching solutions for their products, but there are so many third party applications out there to patch that it can become an impossible task. With new vulnerabilities announced each week, keeping up with all the patches is a problem in itself, and even if handled in bursts, you may have large time periods where your network will be vulnerable. A good patch management solution can fix this for you.  Here are nine reasons why you need good patch management:

1.    Compliance

Whether you are dealing with internal policies, or external requirements like PCI, a good patch management solution makes it easy to remain in compliance, assuring all systems are kept up-to-date.

2.    Reporting

Good patch management applications provide robust reporting, so you know at any point in time what your security posture is and the state of any system.

3.    Supportability

Many companies find that their networks are no longer in a supportable state if they fall too far behind on patching and service packs. A good patch management solution helps ensure that this doesn’t happen to you.

4.    Vulnerability scanning and remediation

One of the most important reasons to have patch management is to keep up with security updates. Good patch management applications can scan for and report vulnerabilities. Administrators will then be able to test these patches and push the updates quickly.

5.    Third party application patching

One major challenge for IT shops is how to deploy patches for the third party applications across their systems. Patch management applications can handle third party apps just as easily as they do operating systems.

With a good patch management solution, keeping your systems, your records, and your licensing up to date is an easy task.

This guest post was provided by Casper Manes on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. GFI is a leading software developer that provides a single source for network administrators to address their network security, content security and messaging needs. Learn more about the right patch management solution.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.