5 Ways to Improve the Patching Process

Take Stock of Your Assets

It's impossible to protect what you don't know you have or where it's running.

"Maintain an up-to-date inventory of all systems being used, whether physical or cloud-based, including operating system, versions, software deployed, network addresses, and location of the device/instance," says Mounir Hahad, head of Juniper Threat Labs at Juniper Networks.

When that updated inventory is combined with a current list of all security products and solutions in place, as well as how they are configured, it is then sometimes possible to standardize operating system versions and patch levels across all products. "This makes the job of rolling out a patch update much simpler, as it can be packaged for a standard deployment," Hahad says.

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