What is Patch Management?

Beyond system infiltration, patch management is a technical security control that, when effective, can help organizations balance their risk tolerance with the stability and security of their systems with:
 

• Improved workflows: An established patch management system can ensure that patching best practices are implemented by default even in dynamic and challenging environments, like container security.
  
  
• Help for compliance with regulatory standards: Effective patch management ensures organizations stay within the patch management mandates of several regulatory frameworks. For example, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) mandates that critical vulnerabilities be patched within 30-days to maintain compliance.
  
  
• Consistent system performance: At worst, unpatched bugs can crash systems. At best, they annoy end users. Establishing a patch management process helps deliver consistency in the performance of systems and software.
  
  
• Fix security vulnerabilities: Security patches are often released to stop specific vulnerabilities, like zero-day vulnerabilities, from being exploited by attackers. Applying these patches quickly is critical to preventing attackers, like Ransomware-as-a-Service groups, from using the vulnerability to access systems and data.

Background:

In December 2021, a critical remote code execution vulnerability was discovered in the Apache Log4j 2 library. This library is a widely used open-source logging framework written in Java, helping developers track and diagnose issues.

Discovery and Response:

The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2021-44228, was publicly disclosed on December 9, 2021. With millions of applications and services relying on Log4j, the potential impact was tremendous. The Apache Software Foundation released patches and mitigations almost immediately to address this vulnerability.

Key Statistics:
 

• Potential Widespread Impact: Enormously popular, the library could be found in hundreds of thousands to millions of applications. The list includes popular consumer products, like Minecraft, and a vast number of enterprise services.
  
• Initial Detection Attempts: Within the first few days of the disclosure, threat actors were aggressively trying to take advantage of the vulnerability with hundreds of thousands of exploit attempts detected.
  
• Subsequent Exploitation: Within the first week, attacks grew more sophisticated with botnets deployed to quickly identify targets.

Response Efforts:
 

• Coordinated Response: The cybersecurity community, major tech companies, and government agencies, quickly coordinated to address the vulnerability. This included the release of patches, detailed mitigation guidance, and tools to detect the vulnerability.
• Ongoing Vigilance: The Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) highlighted that unpatched versions of Log4j would likely remain in systems for years, necessitating ongoing vigilance and remediation efforts.

Lessons Learned:

• Proactive Patch Management: The Log4j incident underscored the importance of having a robust patch management strategy. Organizations that quickly applied the patches were able to mitigate the risk and protect their systems.
• Coordinated Response: The collaborative effort between the Apache Software Foundation, cybersecurity firms, and affected organizations demonstrated the effectiveness of a coordinated response to critical vulnerabilities.
• Continuous Monitoring: The incident highlighted the need for continuous monitoring and rapid response capabilities to detect and address vulnerabilities as soon as they are disclosed.

Conclusion:

The Log4j vulnerability reminds us how effective patching can be in preventing cyberattacks. By maintaining a proactive approach to patching and leveraging coordinated response efforts, organizations significantly reduced their risk of exploitation.

Effectively preventing vulnerabilities like Log4j is a continuous process that requires coordination across departments with security personnel, IT admins, and end users working together to ensure patches are deployed as quickly as possible.

Building a patch management process is an essential step to mitigating the flaws in software that could allow attackers to gain unauthorized access, disrupt business operations, or steal sensitive data.

Understanding the differences between patches and updates will help organizations prioritize patches. They come in various forms, including:

• Security Patches: Fix vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers.
• Bug Fixes: Correct errors or bugs that affect software functionality.
• Feature Updates: Add new features or enhance existing ones.
• Service Packs: Collections of updates, fixes, and enhancements delivered in a single package.
• Cumulative Updates: Combine multiple patches into one update to simplify the patching process.
• Hotfixes: Immediate fixes for critical issues that cannot wait for the next scheduled update.
• Firmware Updates: Improve the performance or fix issues in hardware devices.
• Driver Updates: Ensure compatibility and improve performance of hardware components.
   

Before deploying patches, it’s essential to evaluate and test them to ensure they do not introduce new issues. This process typically involves:
 

• Assessment: Determine the criticality of the patch and its relevance to your systems.
• Testing: Apply the patch in a controlled environment to verify its effectiveness and identify any potential side effects.
• Approval: Once tested, the patch is approved for deployment in the production environment.

Automated tools play a crucial role in streamlining the patch management process. They help ensure patches are applied consistently and promptly, reducing the risk of human error. Key functions of automated tools include:
 

• Scheduling and Deploying Patches: Automated tools can schedule patch deployments during off-peak hours to minimize disruption. They can also deploy patches across multiple systems simultaneously, ensuring timely updates.
• Monitoring and Reporting: These tools monitor the patching process and generate reports on patch status, compliance, and any issues encountered. This helps organizations maintain visibility and control over their patch management efforts.
• Vulnerability Scanning: Automated tools can scan systems for vulnerabilities and identify missing patches, ensuring that all critical updates are applied.
• Rollback Capabilities: In case a patch causes issues, automated tools can roll back the changes to restore the system to its previous state.

The combined frequency of updates, patches, and vulnerability disclosures makes the end user-initiated patch management systems untenable.

Instead, a patch management process needs to be a collaborative initiative supported by technical and administrative controls. This allows organizations to build a process that can help manage changing IT environments and departmental requirements within the established parameters of the organization’s risk management processes.

1. Understand your patching needs
 

Audit your IT environment to identify and inventory all hardware and software assets within your organization. This should include:
 

• Any third-party applications
• Mobile devices
• Workstations
• Laptops
• Servers
• IOT Devices

Compile this information into a patch inventory covering all patches discovered, their criticality, and usage. Use it to track patching efforts and continuously evaluate the risks associated with unpatched systems and then prioritize them.

2. Develop patch management policies and procedures
 

Taking your organization’s risk tolerance, regulatory requirements, and system usage into account, develop clear policies and procedures for patch management. You should include:
 

• Who is responsible for each aspect of patch management
• How you will keep users and stakeholders informed about patching and potential impacts
• How you use risk assessments and vulnerability management tools to identify urgent patches and prioritize them
• What requirements, like testing, should be met to enable widespread deployment
• Details of a regular patch cycle that clearly defines the deployment process for critical to low priority patches
• A rollback plan for quickly reverting a patch if it causes unforeseen issues

3. Choose a patch management tool
 

Select patch management software that meets your organization's specific needs and integrates with existing systems. Use orchestration options to coordinate patching across the entire IT environment. This will help you maintain consistency across systems and platforms.
 

Pick a tool that can be configured to automate tasks such as vulnerability scanning, patch deployment, and reporting on failed or missing patches.

4. Set up a test environment
 

1. Create a controlled environment that mirrors your production environment. It should include all critical applications and configurations found in production. You can set this up on a separate network segment or on virtual machines.

2. Following the same procedures as in a production environment, install the patch on your test systems. Document the entire process including any issues you discover.

3. Verify the continuing functionality of all applications and services. You should perform routine tasks to ensure there are no disruptions or performance issues.

4. Confirm the patch addresses the vulnerability by scanning with security tools for remaining vulnerabilities.

5. Monitor system performance to detect performance degradation or unusual behavior.

6. Record all findings, including any identified issues and their resolution. This record should be used to define the deployment plan for your production environment.

5. Deploy patches
 

Backup your critical systems and stagger your patch deployment in stages and during off-peak hours to minimize disruption. If possible, use an automated tool to create maintenance windows for each patching cycle. Also use automation options to monitor the deployment as it unfolds and quickly address issues or errors.

6. Perform post-patch analysis
 

Following a successful deployment, use automated monitoring to ensure patches have been applied correctly. In the event of a failed patch, identify any reasons and redeploy them as quickly as possible. Use monitoring and reports from your patch management tool to track compliance, identify trends, and measure effectiveness.

7. Document and review the process
 

Keep and share detailed records of all patching activities to align efforts and priorities. This helps teams regularly review the process to adapt to new threats and technologies. 

Data shared in the 2024 Data Breach Investigation Report (DBIR), reveals that it can take nearly two months before 50% of critical vulnerabilities are patched. These numbers underscore the number of challenges facing security practitioners and IT teams when trying to mitigate vulnerabilities. 
 

1.     Managing patches for diverse systems and operating systems can take a lot of time. While especially true for large organizations, the rapid growth of vulnerability disclosure and their rapid exploitation is a growing challenge for all organizations.

The most effective solution is to streamline patching using an automated tool to handle some of the routine tasks. Select a tool that can build a patch inventory with coverage for Windows, Linux, macOS. Scheduled patch scanning can help identify missing patches which can then be added to the inventory for rapid testing and deployment. 

2.     Difficult to manage patches for third-party applications with different release schedules. Even in small organizations, it can be hard to track and identify relevant patches for a growing number of third-party applications.

Automated patch management solutions that support third-party applications should also include detailed information about the patch. This could include Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) identifier, Bulletin ID, and other relevant details. This additional context helps IT teams understand the nature and importance of each patch.

3.     It is challenging to patch workstations without disrupting end users. While some of these concerns can be eased by communicating and adhering to a regular patch cycle, additional control of patching can help.

Automated patch reporting can help teams monitor the progress of a patch deployment and communicate any issues with pending, missing, or failed patches. Furthermore, using maintenance windows to define specific times for patch scans and installation can help maintain productivity across the organization.

4.     Downloading and deploying patches takes up too much bandwidth.

Caching and distributing patches from a central, local server will reduce bandwidth and accelerate deployment.

5.     Limited visibility into cloud resources and configurations can make it difficult to identify which systems need patching.

Implement tools that provide comprehensive visibility and continuous monitoring of cloud environments.

6.     Older, legacy systems may not support modern patching methods or may have compatibility issues with new patches.

Specialized patch management solutions that can handle legacy systems and ensure they are kept secure.

7.     Ensuring that virtual machines have the necessary resources (CPU, RAM) to apply patches without affecting performance.

Using centralized scanning and patching methods that offload processing to dedicated security servers.

8.     Keeping IOT device firmware updated typically requires manual effort. 
 

While monitoring and patching of operating systems and software on the network can be automated using specialized tools, IOT devices are typically outside of the scope of these tools.  Organizations should create policies to review the updates status of the IOT devices (such as network-connected printers) on their networks and keep them updated with the latest firmware.  These devices are increasingly being targeted by threat actors as often vulnerabilities are left unaddressed for long periods of time.

Addressing these challenges and finding ways to solve them enables IT and security teams to be proactive in preventing security risks, ensuring compliance, and maintaining the overall health and stability of their systems.

By working together, IT and security teams can create a robust patch management process that effectively mitigates risks and ensures the stability and security of the organization’s IT infrastructure.