Milliseconds to breach: How patch automation closes attackers’ fastest loophole
1 min read
Summary
Patch management is viewed by many security and IT teams as repetitive, mundane, and time-consuming, often leading to it being deprioritised in favour of other tasks considered more interesting.
Remote working and decentralised workspaces have led many companies to struggle with patch management, leaving them vulnerable to cyber attacks, with many organisations still relying on manual approaches to patch management.
A majority of IT and security leaders admit that patch management takes a backseat to other tasks, with many organisations still mismanaging patching exceptions, resulting in missing or ineffective mitigations and increased risk, according to Gartner.
Many vendors are struggling to provide consistent application, device driver, and firmware patching, with cyber criminals likely to target those that have not implemented successful patch management strategies.
Advances in AI and generative AI attacks mean that static CVSS scores no longer capture organisations’ risk profiles sufficiently to protect them, rendering monthly or quarterly patching cycles obsolete.
Organisations must adopt automated, continuous, risk-based patch management based on machine learning to keep up with the threat landscape.