Improved Manageability
Reaction Time is Key
An annual computer crime and security survey conducted by the Computer Security Institute and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation tallied more than $201 million in quantified financial losses for the first six months of calendar year 2003. Ironically, the vast majority of successful attacks by individual hackers and by fast-spreading worms rely on the presence of known bugs in the target computers—bugs for which patches are already available (see table below).
Source: http://www.itbuynet.com/Pdf/0703-securitywatch.pdf
Deploying patches to thousands of computers manually is not an option. In the past, however, the processes, tools, and techniques for deploying and managing patches have not always been readily available.
Software vendors and customers alike must meet the challenge of security patch management to counter the escalating cost of security breaches and to enable companies to further leverage the Internet for integrating business processes with partners and customers. Cooperation among software vendors and customers can greatly reduce the quantity of successful attacks and the staggering costs associated with them. Microsoft has made keeping customer environments secure and reliable a priority. As part of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative the company leads the way in meeting the challenge of keeping computing environments up-to-date and secure while addressing the equally important issues of cost and stability.
Microsoft has produced a suite of free automation tools for identifying unpatched computers and rolling out updates. These tools are described in the Microsoft Guide to Security Patch Management http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/?url=/technet/security/topics/patch/secpatch/ , a comprehensive guide to implementing a security patch management process for the entire Window environment. Below is a discussion of some of the tools and methodologies Microsoft has developed to help customers manage patches and updates, not only for security patches but for patches and updates to applications as well as the operating system.
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