Why is Patch Management Important for Endpoint Security?
Vulnerabilities pose a significant threat to endpoint security. Cybercriminals commonly scan for an attempt to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities. For example, WannaCry, the ransomware worm, exploited a vulnerability in Windows SMB to spread itself from device to device, while Rorschach spreads via infected Domain Controllers (DCs) By using the EternalBlue exploit for this vulnerability, the malware was able to infect many computers and cause widespread damage. While few types of malware have gained the same fame and notoriety as WannaCry, many exploit vulnerabilities to spread themselves. Often, this involves botnets performing vulnerability scans on the Internet for known vulnerabilities, and, if they find one, exploiting it to deliver the malware.
Often, these vulnerabilities are publicly known, and fixes are available. However, these patches are only useful if organizations have applied them to their endpoints to close the security gaps. In many cases, these attacks target those organizations and endpoints that have failed to promptly apply patches.
This is why patch management is so important for endpoint security. From the time that a vulnerability becomes publicly known — often at the same time the patch is released — to the time an organization has patched it, the company is vulnerable. Patching high-impact vulnerabilities as quickly as possible is critical to protecting the business against the many potential effects of vulnerability exploitation.
Patch Management Best Practices
Patch management is an important part of an organization’s security strategy, and it is vital to do it correctly. Some best practices to incorporate in a patch management process include the following:
Risk Assessment: Different vulnerabilities pose varying levels of potential risk to an organization. A patch management process should start with a risk assessment to identify the risk posed by each vulnerability to ensure that the organization is optimally performing patching and allocating its security resources.
Patch Prioritization: Not all vulnerabilities are created equal, and, often, an organization will have more vulnerabilities to fix and patches to apply than it has resources for. Patches should be prioritized to ensure that the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest potential risk to the organization are fixed first, maximizing the organization’s return on investment.
Automation: Companies have a great deal of software and diverse, sprawling IT architectures. As a result, manual patch management processes are unscalable and inefficient. Automation can help to rapidly and correctly apply patches across an organization’s systems, minimizing the risk that attackers can exploit the vulnerability.
Patch Management vs. Vulnerability Management
Patch management and vulnerability management are both focused on fixing software bugs or vulnerabilities. However, they’re not quite the same thing. In fact, patch management is a subset of the vulnerability management process. When an organization discovers a vulnerability, it has a few different options for addressing it.
These include:
Remediation: Completely fixing the issue.
Mitigation: Taking steps to decrease the impact or exploitability of the vulnerability.
Acceptance: Doing nothing about the vulnerability and accepting the risk.
Patching is a form of vulnerability remediation. However, since an organization also has the option to mitigate or accept a vulnerability, patch management is not quite the same as vulnerability management.
Patch Management with Harmony Endpoint
Patch management is a critical component of every organization’s security strategy. Publicly-known vulnerabilities pose a significant security threat because attackers can exploit them to steal data, deploy malware, or take other malicious actions on an organization’s systems.
However, in many cases, an organization’s vulnerability and patch management workload exceeds the resources available to its security team. To keep up with a growing number of vulnerabilities in a rapidly-expanding IT architecture, automation is essential. With automation, an organization can quickly and accurately deploy patches at scale across its entire IT environment.
Check Point Harmony Endpoint is a market-leading Endpoint protection platform (EPP), and endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution. With its recent integration with Ivanti, Harmony Endpoint has expanded its capabilities to streamline and automate patch management processes. This integration enables Harmony Endpoint to automatically discover, manage, secure, and service corporate IT assets and allows security personnel to quickly detect vulnerabilities and apply patches enterprise-wide with a single click.
Endpoint security is essential to corporate cybersecurity. To find out more about Harmony Endpoint’s Ivanti integration and see its full range of capabilities for yourself, sign up for a free demo today.
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