Chances are you’ve seen the update window out of the corner of your eye while you’re going about your day-to-day tasks. For most employees, the choice is easy. They can click “Remind me later” to make today’s problem tomorrow’s. This creates a patch gap, which inadvertently becomes a major security hole for your small business.
You can’t treat updates as optional. Here’s why a mandatory, automated approach to patch management is better than relying on your team to select the right option.
Software developers release updates for a reason, and that’s to keep users secure from the everyday onslaught of potential threats.
Most updates are designed to close some kind of vulnerability that hackers are already exploiting, which means you don’t want that vulnerability on your device. Once a vulnerability is discovered, hackers can use AI to scan the Internet for unpatched machines to attack. If your team clicks “Remind me later” for three days, you are leaving the front door unlocked during a neighborhood crime spree.
Therefore, in a professional business environment, there is no such thing as an optional security update. They are mandatory for the organization's safety.
Even your most diligent employees will eventually forget to update, especially if it’s not in their list of duties and responsibilities.
When you rely on your employees to manage their own devices, you create a fragmented network where you could have 20 laptops running 20 different versions of Windows. This makes troubleshooting a nightmare and ensures that at least a portion of your workforce is using vulnerable technology. Furthermore, employees hate having to restart their computers, as it disrupts their workflow.
Instead of relying on your team to do this important work; work that they shouldn’t need to do anyway—you need to implement automation.
Centralized patch management removes the choice from the equation and replaces it with automation.
We can see the status of every device in your company from a single dashboard, enabling them to push updates to all devices simultaneously. There’s no risk of an employee not clicking a button or opting out of updates. These updates can be scheduled as well, allowing you to push updates at 2 a.m. instead of during the middle of the day when it would be most troublesome.
Furthermore, each update is tested in a sandbox environment to ensure it won’t break the rest of your business apps (like your CRM or accounting software).
If you’re still not on board with “maintenance hour” automated updates, consider this: If your team spends 15 minutes a day dealing with update prompts, that’s five hours of lost labor. A “set it and forget it” framework means your employees never see an update prompt, while leadership receives a 100 percent compliance report for insurance and regulatory requirements. This means IT can focus on strategic growth rather than hounding unpatched laptops.
If you’re ready to leverage automation for the success of your business, don’t wait any longer. Call First Column IT today at (571) 470-5594.
