Most of us know that patch management is a necessary process in order to make sure that computer networks are secured against known threats and vulnerabilities. It is also important for compliance reasons and to ensure that all of your software is working effectively. However, what you may not know is that you can automate your patch management making the process so much more streamlined and efficient. Let’s explore some of the many benefits of using automated software to take care of your organisation’s patch management.
Improved Security
The most important reason for wanting to stay on top of patch management is obviously going to be for the security benefits. With manual management it can be very easy to fall behind with your updates. We all know that regardless of how important patch management is, it is one of those tasks that keeps getting put to the bottom of the to do list! When you automate patch management you can schedule it on a recurring basis to make sure that your security updates are installed in a timely manner.
Better Productivity
One of the biggest benefits that come along with implementing automated patch management is that it can help to improve company productivity in a number of ways. For starters, many patches bring with them some performance improvements for the software in question which in turn is going to help you and your employees work more efficiently. Also, with all of the security side of things taken care of as mentioned above, there is going to be far less downtime due to malware and other malicious attacks which once again is going to boost productivity. Of course, both of these factors are related to patch management in general rather than specifically to automated software, so let me share one reason why I recommend batch patch and other automated patch management tools. When you are using an automated tool, you can schedule the deployment of patches to happen remotely from a single computer across the entire network. You can also schedule this to take place outside of regular working hours meaning that nobody has to experience downtime during the updates!
Keeping On Top of Compliance
Compliance is a big deal for a number of different industries and failure to keep within the appropriate regulations can result in big problems for your organisation. Some of these problems might include hefty fines and other legal issues. Often, some of these regulations can be met by ensuring that you are on top of deploying the latest security patches to help safeguard your data. If your business is involved in healthcare, finance ore anything requiring you to take payment information then you are probably affected by such regulations in which case you need to stay on top of patch management!
A More Effective IT Department
So, we have already touched on how automating patch management can improve companywide productivity, but let’s look a little bit closer at how it impact the IT department in particular. Think of how many people it would take and how much time they need to spend to deploy all of the relevant patches across your network manually. The chances are that unless you are a large organisation you probably cannot really afford to dedicate that many man hours to patch management! It could be a full time job for one person which is why so many organisations end up not keeping up with it! However, with automated software you will drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to handle patch management allowing your IT team to be much more efficient.
Stay On Top of the Latest Software Features
Update patches are not always about security loopholes and vulnerabilities. Sometimes they bring with them new features to add additional functionality to software applications or improved support for a broader range of platforms. This means an overall improvement in the performance of the application, so if these patches are installed in a timely manner then it can be an advantage for your organisation as you are going to stay on top of the latest features.
These are just some of the benefits that can be associated with using automated patch management software, but there are many more. It is certainly something that is well worth looking into if you want to secure your network.
Raymond Bilger 
Daryl Green