The evolution of the cyber threat landscape highlights the emerging need for organizations to strengthen their ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate cyber risks before they evolve into security incidents. Although the terms “patch management” and “vulnerability management” are used as if they are interchangeable, this is not the case. Most are confused because applying patches is one of the many ways available in our arsenal to mitigate cyber risks.
What is Patch Management?
Patch management is a strategy for managing patches or upgrades for software applications and technologies and involves the acquisition, testing, and installation of multiple patches to an administered computer system in order to fix known vulnerabilities. Patch management significantly shapes the security of your business, network and data. As soon as a piece of software is released, hackers begin their attempts to find their way into that software through holes and vulnerabilities. There are times in which they are successful, hence the need for patches.
Patch Management is a Function of Vulnerability Management
The decision to either roll out, unroll, or disregard a specific patch falls within the larger context of vulnerability management. Defined as a security practice specifically designed to proactively mitigate or prevent the exploitation of IT vulnerabilities, vulnerability management is not a stand-alone scan-and-patch function. It’s a holistic function that takes a proactive view of managing the daunting task of addressing identified vulnerabilities in deployed hardware devices and software. Simply put, vulnerability management is a superset of patch management, as evidenced by the following equation:
Vulnerab ..
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