Poor Patch Management: Eliminate This Major Cyber Risk Factor for Any Business

Managed service providers (MSPs) see firsthand how businesses’ IT environments are evolving. Companies are digitizing more data, automating more processes, enabling work-from-home, and creating hybrid, cloud, and on-premise systems. New IT capabilities made possible by these growing and evolving systems give businesses a range of benefits, from increased productivity and enhanced customer experiences to a better bottom line. But they also mean a larger cyberattack surface.

The list of known exploited vulnerabilities is long. When you review them, you’ll find hundreds of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) that put networks, applications, data – and businesses – at risk. But the biggest risk your clients face is not addressing them.

Patch Management Facts and Stats

Research reveals vast opportunities for MSPs to solve patch management challenges:

·         Businesses lack the time to address patches promptly. On average, it takes two months to patch critical risks.

·         More than half of vulnerabilities that exist on business and organization systems, are more than two years old, and 17 percent are more than five years old.

·         Companies may not know which vulnerabilities are putting their organizations at risk. For example, vulnerabilities are present in 84 percent of codebases.

These facts are sobering, but there’s one stat that’s guaranteed to capture your clients’ attention. IBM reports that the average cost of a data breach in 2022 rose to $4.35 million, an all-time high, up from $4.24 million in 2021. Putting off patching vulnerabilities can make losses of this magnitude more likely.

What’s Standing in the Way of Patching Vulnerabilities?

You know that businesses and organizations have good intentions when it comes to patch management. No one wants the risk of an unpatched vulnerability. However, your clients and prospects have challenges to overcome with patch management.

First, they need to know they have vulnerabilities. Vendors will announce them and publish patches that correct them. Media and user forums can also help spread the word. But attempting to stay up to date with news of vulnerabilities is a challenge for internal IT resources with full schedules. Vulnerability scanning that works in the background to discover network risks can help overcome this issue and add significant value to the services you provide.

Once a business discovers vulnerabilities, they need to prioritize them. Known vulnerabilities are, obviously, the priority. If your client is aware they exist, so do hackers. It’s a race to patch the vulnerability before bad actors exploit it, and internal IT teams may be unable to win that race. Unfortunately, many don’t.

Additionally, businesses and organizations need to know that some CVEs are more critical to patch than others. The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) assigns numbers to CVEs: 9-10 for the most critical to 0-3.9 for low or no severity. Those ratings reflect how easy it is for an attacker to exploit a vulnerability and how much impact a hacker can have on a system. But there’s more to consider. A business needs to identify which of its systems support mission-critical processes and specific threats to its organization. Your expertise will help them determine the most effective strategy for patch management and, ultimately, network security.

Businesses and organizations also need MSPs’ patch management skills and expertise to patch without disruptions to operations. You can offer services that efficiently test patches to show they won’t impact other applications or systems and prevent downtime. You can also provide value by providing verification that the patch has successfully eliminated the vulnerability.

An Unsung Hero

Of all the services you provide, patch management usually doesn’t stand out during a sales pitch. It’s not as sexy as a next-gen firewall solution or AI-powered network monitoring. However, every time your clients make a change to their IT environments, or a vendor introduces a new feature, new vulnerabilities can exist that hackers can – and will -- exploit. Patch management is vital to preventing those attacks.

MSPs can minimize concern over these risks by offering vulnerability scanning, patch management, and testing services that overcome hurdles to getting the job done and keep networks safe.