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The Importance of Patching
Although software vendors continually work to fix vulnerabilities in their products, the need for diligent patch management does not seem to be going away. The process of controlling the deployment and maintenance of software released into your network environment includes effective remediation of security vulnerabilities so that system stability is assured.
Maintaining a known level of trust within your operating systems and application software is critical to minimizing threats. Patching and a patch management policy is an important component in maintaining security. If vulnerabilities aren't remediated through diligent patching and properly configured security settings, you could be leaving yourself open to significant losses of revenue and intellectual property.
The following areas are important if you are trying to ascertain the financial impact not patching or inadequate patching can have on your organization:
- Computer Downtime: How much system downtime can your organization handle before your business is adversely affected? You should consider not only the lost productivity of employees but also the transactions that could be interrupted and the subsequent business loss. The main cause of computer downtime is attacks on unprotected machines from malicious agents. Either the agent itself causes the interruption or the time spent fixing your systems causes downtime. Either way, your computers can sometimes be down for days at a time.
- Repair Time: Remediating the wide-range of problems that can occur in your environment can involve hidden as well as obvious costs. Do you know the resources you could expend on reinstalling all your PCs? Complete reinstallation may be required in order to close the security holes that allowed the attack in the first place.
- Regaining Data Integrity: You might have to retrieve data from your last error-free backup. Or, you might have to confirm data integrity with partners or customers.
- Your Reputation: If your computers go down, and your data is compromised, so is your credibility with customers or partners. Do you know how much losing one good customer can cost you?
- Legal Liability: What might it cost to defend your organization from others taking legal action after an attack? Organizations providing important services to others have had their patch management process (or lack of one) put on trial. Keeping your systems patched may be part of your regulatory compliance requirements. If your patch management service is below par, you may be leaving yourself open to lawsuits.
- Stolen data or intellectual property: How much risk is involved if poor patch management leads to lost mission-critical data or intellectual property?
Answering these issues honestly and establishing a strong patch and management settings program is key to protecting your organizations networks, systems and ultimately the bottom line. In an era of sophisticated attacks, you need to do much more than simply restrict physical access to your network. UpdateEXPERT Premium offers patch and settings management that’s easy to install and use, reliable and scalable to any size enterprise.
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If you're ready to get current pricing for UpdateEXPERT Premium Patch Management, you can get a quick quote now. If you're not quite ready to become an UpdateEXPERT customer, we offer a free trial of UpdateEXPERT.
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