Think back to the last time you received an update notification. If you are like most people, you opted for a reminder rather than implement the update at that moment. After all, life is hectic and no one wants to invest time in adding patches. However, the problem with delaying updates and patches is that they are likely to compromise your computer and possibly your business. This is precisely why our managed IT services experts in Dallas recommend prompt patch management to shore up digital security.

Understand the Importance of Patches

Updating your computer with the latest patch should be viewed as a necessary and important corrective action. This action prevents the exploitation of a threat, ultimately reducing or eliminating its ability to successfully exploit an asset’s vulnerability. Patch management is a component of overarching digital vulnerability management in which our managed IT services team in Dallas can help you identify, categorize and defeat digital security risks.

Patch management is an essential process for every business and individual computer user regardless of the amount of information stored on the computer, the number of employees, and annual revenue. Patch management secures the computer, the server, software and additional tech systems. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to delay the implementation of the latest patches.

However, the average time it takes for an individual or business to implement digital security updates is in excess of 102 days. This is quite the shocking statistic when tens of thousands of digital security vulnerabilities are reported every single year. Keep in mind, it merely takes one such attack to cripple your business.

Timely Patch Management is Essential

Each digital system at your business or home has a litany of software, systems and digital products. There are patches and unique digital vulnerability disclosure schedules for each system. Though it chews up time to catalog tech vendors along with their respective patches used for digital security vulnerability disclosures along with product notifications, doing so is worth the effort as it has the potential to safeguard your valuable computers.

The creation of a patch release system for tracking purposes and/or a feed for notification will ultimately save you plenty of time. Every computer user and business owner should be aware that Microsoft typically releases patches on the second Tuesday of every month, making it that much easier to plan updates.

It is in your interest to promptly deploy patches to test their efficacy and compatibility prior to relying on them for protection. Patch testing is especially important for a company’s servers and other elements that are considered mission-critical. However, if you cannot create your own test environment, it will certainly help to test the latest patches on a couple of users or other small segments to get a sense of whether any problems arise. Validate the patch, be mindful of the potential for incompatibility issues, and move forward accordingly.

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Our managed IT services team in Dallas is here to help with patch management, digital security and more. Reach out to us to learn about our services.