Eliminate Vulnerabilities: Step-by-Step Guide to Build an Effective Patch Management Program
Modern organizations are struggling to come up with and enforce effective patch management programs to combat increasingly complex cyberattacks. Combating these cyberattacks needs a carefully-created, comprehensive, and fully integrated vulnerability and patch management program.
Can vulnerability management alone effectively prevent cyber-attacks, considering the diverse range of potential threats and attack vectors in today's cybersecurity landscape?
Although vulnerability management is a crucial cybersecurity process for detecting vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and other security risks, it doesn't help organizations prevent cyberattacks. What is the point of detecting vulnerabilities when we can't remediate them?
Many organizations lack prevention strategies; it is when patch management is considered to deploy patches for remediating risks and keeping systems up to date. It plays a significant role when it comes to securing the network, achieving compliance, and bringing functional improvements to applications.
Due to an unstructured patch management program, vulnerability remediation takes longer time, letting attackers leverage the security gaps, resulting in massive security havoc.
Infamous Cyberattacks Due to Unpatched Vulnerabilities
Unpatched vulnerabilities are the favourite attack vectors for intruders. Ransomware gangs are looking for unpatched vulnerabilities to take control of an IT network and put the organization's security and reputation at stake. Numerous cyberattacks have happened in the past where attackers exploited a vulnerability that IT security teams failed to patch even when an update was available months ago.
| Cyberattack | How Unpatched Vulnerabilities Were Exploited |
|---|---|
| WannaCry | It exploited unpatched vulnerabilities, particularly targeting systems running outdated versions of Microsoft Windows, to propagate and encrypt files, causing widespread disruption rapidly. |
| NotPetya | It exploited unpatched vulnerabilities, particularly targeting systems running outdated versions of Microsoft Windows, to propagate and encrypt files, causing widespread disruption rapidly. |
| NightSky | It exploited unpatched vulnerabilities to infiltrate targeted systems, underscoring the significance of timely security updates and patches in mitigating potential threats from such malicious activities. |
| LockBit 2.0 | It exploited unpatched vulnerabilities, particularly targeting systems running outdated versions of Microsoft Windows, to propagate and encrypt files, causing widespread disruption rapidly. |
| REvil | It exploited unpatched vulnerabilities, particularly targeting systems running outdated versions of Microsoft Windows, to propagate and encrypt files, causing widespread disruption rapidly. |
With security becoming a rising concern in the organization, IT teams need a full-fledged vulnerability and patch management program that detects and instantly remediates vulnerabilities, fixes misconfigurations, keeps systems updated, and reduces attack surfaces effectively.
Tackling Remediation Challenges with Fully Integrated Vulnerability and Patch Management Program
According to a study, 57% of cyberattack victims stated that applying a patch would have prevented the attack. One of the major reasons organizations are taking a step back in deploying patches is the time it takes. This occurs due to a siloed approach to managing risks and patches. In the early 2000s, the number of vulnerabilities discovered yearly was hardly in the thousands. Hence, IT teams were able to correlate the data among different tools and remediate the critical ones.
Whereas today, the number of vulnerabilities discovered every year has skyrocketed, and manually assessing the vulnerability data and correlating them with the relevant patches has become an ardent job for IT and security teams. Further, some vulnerabilities aren't patchable and require specific security controls to mitigate the risks.
To overcome these challenges, an integrated vulnerability and patch management program is a necessity for organizations to deal with the growing vulnerabilities. With additional security remediation controls embedded in the program, a wide range of vulnerability and security risks can be fixed, and the overall security posture of the organization can be strengthened.
Building an Effective Patch Management Program
Step 01: Gain Complete Visibility Over IT Assets
The initial and crucial phase in establishing a resilient patch management program involves the thorough identification of all IT assets present in the organizational network. Having comprehensive insights into your IT landscape helps pinpoint security risks and deployment of patches accurately. This approach ensures the comprehensive security of the entire IT infrastructure, leaving no devices overlooked. Additionally, it offers clarity on asset functionality and performance while also providing awareness of potential shadow IT within the network.
Step 02: Detect Missing Patches, Vulnerabilities, Misconfigurations, and Other Security Risks
The initial and crucial phase in establishing a resilient patch management program involves the thorough identification of all IT assets present in the organizational network. Having comprehensive insights into your IT landscape helps pinpoint security risks and deployment of patches accurately. This approach ensures the comprehensive security of the entire IT infrastructure, leaving no devices overlooked. Additionally, it offers clarity on asset functionality and performance while also providing awareness of potential shadow IT within the network.
Step 03: Download the Necessary Patches from Vendor Site
Now you know the security risks that need to be addressed in your network. The next step is to download the necessary patches from various vendor sites to remediate the vulnerabilities and risks. Vendors release patches regularly.
Step 04: Prioritize Patches Based on Severity
Upon downloading patches, the next step involves prioritizing them according to their severity and recognizing that not all vulnerabilities and misconfigurations carry the same level of risk. Failing to establish a strategic prioritization process may lead IT teams to concentrate on less critical issues, allowing high-risk vulnerabilities to persist in the network. Emphasizing prioritization based on risk levels before deployment enables the remediation of high-risk vulnerabilities first, significantly reducing overall risk exposure.
Step 05: Test Patches Before Deploying in the Production Environment
A few patches might cause software malfunction and disturb productivity, causing system downtime. To avoid this, create a test setup replicating your production environment and thoroughly test the patches there before deploying them in the production environment. This step is essential to ensure the functionality and suitability of the patches regarding your production landscape.
Step 06: Deploy the Patches and Remediate Vulnerabilities
After testing the patches, deploy them across the devices in your network. You can schedule the patch deployment process according to your organization's requirements. Some patches might require a system reboot; hence, ensure that you schedule deployment at a convenient time without interrupting the users' day-to-day tasks. Successful patch deployment will fix the discovered vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in the network.
Step 07: Fix Security Risks with Necessary Remediation Controls
Not all vulnerabilities and security risks can be fixed with patching alone. There are certain vulnerabilities that require security controls beyond patching to mitigate risks. Ensure that your patch management program is built with such remediation controls to monitor the devices and apply security controls continuously. With a bundled program that can apply patches and mitigate risks, you can minimize attack surfaces to a large extent and prevent possible cyber-attacks.
Step 08: Validate the Remediation Status
One of the significant goals of patch management is to mitigate or remediate the vulnerabilities present in the organizational network. After deploying the patches, ensure that the vulnerability and misconfiguration data correlate with the next scan. This will yield a clear picture of the vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that are fixed during the deployment process.
Automating the Patch Management Program
Another major pitfall for Patch Management programs is manual processes. Many IT teams still rely on manual methods for scanning, downloading, and deployment. This further delays the patching process, causing huge remediation gaps. By automating the patch management process, IT teams can speed up remediation and strengthen the overall security posture of an organization. With automation in place, you can also eliminate manual efforts and save the huge amount of time spent on patching devices.
KPIs of Patch Management
After adopting the best practices for effective patch management, how do we know the impact? How do we know if the applied measures are successful?
Here are a few KPIs you can consider measuring the effectiveness of Patch Management:
Patch Management KPIs
| KPI | Description |
|---|---|
| Patch Coverage | It is the percentage of assets that are patched with the latest security updates within the given time frame. |
| Time to Remediate | The time taken to remediate risks should not be more; the less time it takes to remediate, the more secure your organization. |
| Patch Impact | It measures the positive or negative effects after you have deployed the patch. |
| Number of Unplanned Downtime | The time taken to remediate risks should not be more; the less time it takes to remediate, the more secure your organization. |
| Patch Success Rate | Ratio of patches that are successfully installed and verified on the target systems and applications to the total number of patches attempted. |
SecPod SanerNow Patch Management to Manage Vulnerabilities and Security Risks
SecPod SanerNow Patch Management provides an automated solution to deploy patches and remediate vulnerabilities on all operating systems like Windows, Mac, Linux, and 450+ third-party applications.
SanerNow's truly integrated and centralized solution enables you to gain complete visibility over your organization's IT assets, discover vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and other security risks, and remediate the loopholes with integrated patching and necessary remediation controls. After patching, you can also quickly validate the results with the industry's fastest 5-minute vulnerability scans and ensure the vulnerabilities are mitigated in your network.
With SanerNow, You Can
• Run continuous scans and gain real-time visibility over IT assets.
• Discover vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, missing patches, and other risks with the industry's fastest scans.
• Prioritize patches based on the CISA-SSVC-based risk prioritization method.
• Test and approve patches before deployment.
• Deploy patches on all OSs like Windows, Mac, Linux, and 450+ third-party applications.
• Roll back faulty and incompatible updates.
• Leverage hundreds of security remediation controls to mitigate risks.
• Achieve compliance with HIPAA, PCI, ISO, NIST, and SOC-2.
• Analyze with tons of insightful and customizable reports.
• Automate end-to-end tasks.
• Quantify your security posture with a cyber-hygiene score.
Final Thoughts
The role of preventing cyber-attacks not only starts and ends with vulnerability management. Patch management plays a crucial role in remediating vulnerabilities, fixing misconfigurations, and managing the whole attack surface. As Cyberattack prevention is becoming a prominent responsibility for IT and security teams, an effective patch management solution that discovers and remediates risks is a mandate for organizations today. Full-scale prevention cannot be attained with siloed approaches. Only a unified solution for managing vulnerabilities and security risks will help IT and security teams accomplish the goal of preventing cyberattacks.