Organizations are always concerned with improving efficiencies to make business flow smoother. Some of the biggest inefficiencies in any business revolve around time wasted on operational tasks. Whether it is a stale accounting process, or something as trivial as routing phone calls to the proper department, saving time by improving a process can mean more profits, which is what business is all about.

The strength of your patch management strategy is vitally important to your overall cybersecurity strategy. Keep reading to learn more about how to create a patch management strategy.

There’s a saying in the cybersecurity community which states that just because you are compliant doesn’t mean that you are secure. Over the years, many images have been used to illustrate the point. One memorable image is that of a nude bicyclist wearing a helmet. By all standards, that is the epitome of “compliant, but not secure”. Many organizations have shifted the focus away from merely achieving compliance, to being both compliant and secure.

Vulnerability patching is the short-term implementation of patches, which are pieces of code added to existing software to improve functionality or to remove vulnerabilities that have been flagged. Patches usually come from vendors of affected hardware or software and IT should apply them to an affected area in a timely manner.

Given the countless cyber threats facing organizations these days, security has become one of the most pressing issues on the executive mind. Yet when we talk about cybersecurity, we rarely focus on security vulnerabilities and how patching those vulnerabilities is crucial for a cybersecurity program. So what is vulnerability patching, exactly? A vulnerability is a flaw that cybercriminals can exploit to gain unauthorized access or to perform unauthorized actions on a computer system.

Patch management is the process of tracking security bug(s) and applying updates (code changes) on them in existing applications, software, or programs on a computer and other technologies to improve the functionality and security of already released programs installed in systems.

The objective of an organization when implementing cybersecurity controls is to eliminate risk, but this oftentimes involves settling for managing risk at an acceptable level. Each organization defines what that acceptable level is depending on several factors including the environment, the criticality of function, the asset type, etc. There are many methods and techniques that an organization can then use to manage this risk. One of the most commonly used methods is patching.

ESG research on cyber risk management, which involved 340 cybersecurity professionals, revealed that 40 percent felt tracking patch and vulnerability management over time was their biggest challenge.