Momentum - Business to Business Online Magazine MOMENTUM October 2019 | Page 36

TECH
DAVID ALCORN
Franchise Owner
NerdsToGo League City
www.nerdstogo.com/location/league-city-tx/
PATCH MANAGEMENT –
A Necessary Inconvenience
H
ow many times have you been on your
company computer about to complete
something very important - then you get a
pop-up, informing you your computer will
shut down in 15 minutes? Love it, right? You
absolutely love the 30 minutes it takes to reboot after
installing updates. Before this monthly task ruins your
day, please understand that the patching of a computer
is an absolute necessity.
Before I discuss Patch Management, what is a patch?
When I was a kid, every time I played outside and ripped
my jeans, my mom would sew a patch on the damaged
area – usually the knee – and my jeans would continue
to serve its purpose. A patch in computing terms is an
update, or fix, to the system. These fixes typically happen
for 2 reasons, a bug(fault) in the existing program, or a
security vulnerability, or a weakness in the system found
by an attacker to gain unauthorized access.
Every person on a computer use tens of hundreds of
applications daily, and some are fairly new – or newly
updated.
Why do I get notifications to update apps
or software?
Software development companies release their
software in very early stages of the implementation
and there are instances where the applications and/or
software begin to show bugs and crashes on the system.
In this case, a patch would play an important role.
What If I Don’t Patch?
Not patching used to be an option,
but Microsoft an made patching in
Windows 10 mandatory. Reboots
are not required right away, but
a forced reboot will happen
if ignored. Although this is
an inconvenience, patching
makes is twice as much of an
inconvenience for attackers,
or hackers. The risks of not
installing regular updates
into your system. Could lead
up to situations as serious
as complete lost, stolen, or
compromised data.
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MOMENTUM
Not All For Addressing Evil
Patch management is not only to address the
weaknesses in a system. Software developers can add
enhanced features to an application through patching.
We all have witnessed an improved interface or added
functionalities resulting from a software update.
An example of a patch that adds significant features
would be a Service Pack(SP). A service pack is a collection
of updates, fixes, and enhancements – known as a rollup.
Although service packs are not released frequently,
the chance for an error during installation is reduced
significantly.
Patch Schedule
There are many popular patch updates like “Patch
Tuesday”, “Exploit Wednesday” etc. The “Patch Tuesday”
is not an official name. Microsoft releases the update
for their world’s popular software product like Window,
Office suite etc. in North America on the second Tuesday
of the month.
“Exploit Wednesday” is also a popular term in patch
management. Think about it…who would be the first
person to identify all the patches deployed for the
month? If you guessed hackers, you are right. Since not
all users install patches immediately, the vulnerabilities
are still on your computer, and the bad guys will try until
they find a user that felt it not necessary to install right
away.
Internally Scheduling Patch Management
The developers at Microsoft understand there
may be instances where a project is being
worked on and it would be difficult
to interrupt the work and install
updates. With a centralized patch
management system, updates can
be scheduled during off-hours.
A system administrator would
typically schedule updates after
5:00 PM and before 7:00 AM,
or “maintenance hours.” Patch
management is provided free
my Microsoft, but enhanced
tools, such as Barracuda, are
available at an additional
cost.