Keeping your systems safe with patch management

New software vulnerabilities are being discovered every day, and the window available to an organisation to protect its environment has become extremely limited. Patching is often ad hoc, without proper testing, and this can lead to systems failing or becoming unstable. According to Gartner, manually implementing patches on 1,000 servers costs £170,000 a year.

Computacenter has created a Patch Management Service to address this problem. The service is modular to allow for customisation to meet a customer’s specific needs. The first module provides an inventory of an organisation’s estate and an evaluation of the current levels of patches. This provides an insight into what vulnerabilities are present and which require urgent attention.

The second module is the creation of the infrastructure to successfully package and deliver the patches. The third module is about reducing risk, such as ensuring that anti-virus signatures are up-to-date. The service also provides protection by malicious behaviour before it can occur.

The fourth module is about providing additional intelligence on new and emerging threats and helping organisations prepare for forthcoming events. The service delivers personalised alerts, notifying the customer of vulnerabilities as they are identified but before they are exploited.

The fifth module covers the testing and validation of patches. To avoid the possibility of a patch causing a system to fail or introducing new vulnerabilities it is important to test the patch on a system that closely matches the production environment. The Computacenter Integration Centre keeps copies of customers server and client builds and will test a new patch against these builds to ensure interoperability with existing hardware and software.

The final module is the delivery of the patch itself, through Computacenter’s Service Operations Centre or delivered on-site. This process can include taking a backup image of the server, packaging and installing the patch, restoring the service to its original configuration and creating a full report.