Keeping Up-to-Date with Patches
As I was coming home from a customer in East Haven, I was driving on 91 South, when I heard one of the most awful sounds you can hear when you are driving – a ‘pop’ and then the sound of flat rubber revolving at a very high rate of speed.
Flat tire.
So I called, and then waited, for the Triple A driver to come out and change my tire (before you say anything, I’m a network guy – not an auto mechanic!) Not too long after this, I’m back on the road with another task on my list: patch the tire.
It is easy to see that a patch has to be applied – there is a hole.
In this world of computers, technology and a never-ending game of ‘cat and mouse’ with spammers and virus writers – patching is not so obvious.
Here are a few rules in regards to applying patches to your vendor’s products:
1 – Be informed. Find out the best way to be notified by your vendor when patches are released. If you don’t know they exist, there is no way to know if you should apply them.
2 – Don’t apply it. That’s right – don’t apply it until you read through the release notes, to find out what it does.
3 – Test it. After you are convinced that this patch is worth applying, then you need to test it out. You wouldn’t want to push this patch out to all of your computers and then find out that your email will not open; or all of your printers will only print in hot pink – you need to have a ‘test computer’ that receives the patch first. Verify that all of your programs, email, web surfing and printing work as it did before the patch.
4 – Automate the update. There is a free utility, from Microsoft, that allows you to automate Microsoft updates – Microsoft creates a program called Windows Software Update Service, which allows you to push out Windows Updates to your computers. In order to push out other vendor’s patches, it’s best to find a suitable automation tool to help you (BigFix, Kaseya, HyBlue, etc.).
5 – Schedule it. Trying to push out this patch to all of the computers during the day is a pain – not to mention you will receive a list of ‘excuses’ from users on why you can not get to their computers at a specific time. Email all users and let them know that Wednesday evening at 6:00PM, all computers have to be free for the installation.
Use these steps to help push out your patches – it’s a tedious job, but it needs to be done.
