Most effective way to up to date 3rd party software in IT environment

Direnc Onen - 06/26/2023

In an IT environment, keeping third-party software up-to-date is critical to maintaining security and ensuring optimum performance. Here are some effective ways to stay up to date:

Automatic Patch Management: Use patch management software like Easy2Patch to automate the third-party software update process. This software can scan for vulnerabilities, download patches and deploy them to your IT environment. It simplifies the task and provides timely updates.

Centralized Software Distribution: Implement a centralized software distribution system that allows you to push updates to all connected devices from a central location. This approach ensures consistency and reduces the time and effort required to manually update individual systems. ConfigMgr can be used for centralized software and/or update distribution and WSUS can be used for update distribution. Intune can also be used if there is an online IT administration. Easy2Patch can integrate with all of these systems.

Vendor Notifications: Subscribe to newsletters or mailing lists provided by third-party software vendors. They usually send notifications about new releases, security updates and patches. Be aware of the latest software versions and security patches for your environment. However, considering that there are tens or even hundreds of 3rd party software in an IT structure, it can be difficult to deal with such notifications.

Vulnerability Monitoring: Use vulnerability management tools or services that provide information about vulnerabilities found in your third-party software. This helps you prioritize updates based on the severity of vulnerabilities and take appropriate action. You can use Microsoft Defender online vulnerability monitoring system .

Regular Audit and Inventory: Keep an up-to-date inventory of all third-party software installed in your IT environment. Perform regular checks to identify outdated or unsupported software versions. This information will guide your update efforts. This process includes manual control. Follow-up operations for critical applications may seem easy. However, checking the updates of dozens of software every day will require a lot of effort compared to an automatic 3rd party patch management software. IT administrators who do not use 3rd Party update management have to allocate thousands of hours annually if they do this manually.

Test and Staging Environments: Before deploying updates to production systems, set up test and staging environments to evaluate the impact of updates on your specific IT environment. This helps identify any compatibility issues or conflicts with existing software. By creating policies within central software distribution systems such as SCCM, distribution processes to test and production environments can be carried out in a controlled manner.

User Education and Awareness: Educate your users on the importance of keeping third-party software up-to-date and encourage them to immediately install updates on their own devices. Awareness campaigns can help foster a culture of safety and responsibility among your users. One of the most important issues in informing users is to download the right application from the right source. This is an issue that is too important to be left to the end user and may involve risks. Frequent training and information should be given to end users to be careful in the selection and use of programs. In this regard, central 3rd Party update software such as Easy2Patch will help eliminate this risk on end users.

Security Policies and Procedures: Develop and enforce security policies that require timely updating of third-party software. Reduce the risk of outdated software compromising the overall security of your IT environment by making it a requirement to update systems before they reach the network.

By combining these approaches, you can create an effective strategy for keeping third-party software up to date in your IT environment, reducing the risk of security vulnerabilities, and ensuring optimal performance and security.