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Patch Management and its Importance in the IT Security Field

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http://www.ehacking.net/2014/05/patch-management-and-its-importance-in.html
Fixing the vulnerability before they
are exploited. Previously organizations are used Information
Technology (IT) for the sake to reduce their cost, automate the
system and to increase the profitability; but an insecure IT
infrastructure can increase their cost and reduce the profitability,
imagine a malware attack. It takes time, effort and money to
investigate a hacking attack and to implement the countermeasures to
avoid any attack in future; preemptive strike or proactive approach
is the decent way to avoid any attack, you can call it Patch
Management.







What is Patch
Management ?

Let’s consider a scenario, an
organization that creates software; has created an outstanding
software to be deployed in banks. The functionality of the software
is to connect online banking system with local server where every
information of the customer being stored; a black-hat hacker has
found vulnerability on the created software and this vulnerability
may put the data at high risk. The organization that created this
software got to know about vulnerability and released a piece of code
to fix this vulnerability. Now this piece of code will be used by the
IT department in banks, the process to use the code is called
Patching and the overall workflow is called Patch Management.






Patch management is a process that must
be done routinely and should be as all-encompassing as possible to be
most effective. In a network of hundreds of systems, all it takes is
one machine to become compromised to open the door for multiple other
machines to be compromised as well.



This is not to say that all systems
should be treated equally; each company should prioritize its
assets and protect the most critical ones first. But that being said,
it is important to ensure patching eventually takes place on all
machines and not just the most valuable to the company.






Importance of Patch
Management






Patching
has become a crucial part of the Information Security process, it
ensures the security of the IT infrastructure from the known and
discovered vulnerabilities. Apart from this, patch management also
enhances the performance and productivity of the software, by keeping
an eye on the latest updates and happenings in the respective
software industry.




If
you are an IT administrator, Penetration tester or working in a
similar position; and willing to secure your IT infrastructure then
a smart patch management software is therefore, very important
for your work process. In this regard, monitoring is very important
and manually you cannot perform monitoring of your network, and the
combination of systems, hence a patch management software can do the
job and create reports to automate the tasks.






Before
going to conclude, I would like to make a clear line between an IT
structure having patch management and the one without patch
management. The difference is understood, the one without patch
management is the vulnerable IT infrastructure; and as a result it
increases the maintenance cost. To avoid your organization from these
hurdles, use an intelligent patch management software that has the
capabilities to perform the intended job.






Ehacking Staff
With more than 50 global partners, we are proud to count the world’s leading cybersecurity training provider. EH Academy is the brainchild of Ehacking, which has been involved in the field of training since the past Five years and continues to help in creating professional IT experts.

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