Microsoft windows patch management server

With Configuration Manager consistently landing patches each cycle, engineering teams began to consistently meet the 95 percent goal.

Finally, as a native Azure solution available directly through the Azure portal, Azure Update Management provided the flexibility and features needed for engineering teams to remediate vulnerabilities while satisfying these conditions at scale.

The traditional system typically required a patching team to coordinate patch deployment with the team that owned the application, all to ensure that the application would not be affected by recently installed patches. We implemented a number of changes to transition smoothly from that centralized patching service to using Azure Update Management as our enterprise solution.

Our first step was to deliver demos to help engineering teams learn to use Azure Update Management. These sessions covered everything from the prerequisites necessary to enable the solution in Azure to how to schedule servers, apply patches, and troubleshoot failures.

The Manageability Team also drew from its own experience getting started with Azure Update Management to create a toolkit to help engineering teams make the same transition. The toolkit provided prerequisite scripts, like adding the Microsoft Monitoring Agent extension and creating an Azure Log Analytics workspace. It also contained a script to set up Azure Security Center when teams had already created default workspaces; since Azure Update Management supports only one automation account and Log Analytics workspace, the script cleaned up the automation account and linked it to the workspace used for patching.

Next, the Manageability Team took on proving scalability across the datacenter environment. The goal was to take a subset of servers from the centralized patching service in Configuration Manager and patch them through Azure Update Management.

Downtime is the key factor in entire patching activity. Many of us are experiencing issues while getting downtime for business. Every organization handles it differently, based on business approval. Few of the methods which can be used mentioned below.! By following one of this method you can reduce the efforts which we add for getting downtime for business. As mentioned above, getting downtime is always a challenging task for all administrators.

There are a couple of points, that we need to consider while preparing a schedule to line up it with agreed downtime. Change management is also one of the important factors in patching. This gives awareness about the upcoming changes in the environment and also help from an audit point of view. Every organization will have defined process based on business needs.

It's recommended using Standard Change Template since patching activity is one of the mandatory activities which will be performed on a monthly basis. Measuring the implanted work is always beneficial to the organization from the security audit point of view. For example — if you have four hours of downtime, then perform the patching compliance scan on second of third hours so that you can re-patch the servers within the same downtime under approved change.

If you missed checking compliance within the same downtime window, then you may need to request for new downtime for business and also need to raise a separate change ticket. Do not keep a backlog for a longer time. This impact on the overall compliance by end of month cycle. Microsoft recommends deploying OOB patches as soon as possible to avoid the external attack.

For example, If the vulnerability is identified in Internet Explorer 9, then we have to identify how many servers in the environment are running with IE9. Data can be fetched by the compliance tool which you are using in your environment. If you are using Microsoft SCCM , then you can create a custom report with a custom query to fetch this data. With a documented and repeatable patch management process , plus JumpCloud System Insights and patch management policies, you have a winning combination.

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Share This Article. A: A LOT. What is Windows Patch Management? Windows patches have various classifications, including: Critical Updates Security Updates Definition Updates Updates Update Rollups Service Packs Feature Packs Drivers Tools Whether a machine receives all patches or just critical updates, security updates, and service packs is up to security administrators and your internal risk management processes. The Challenges in Windows Patch Management Finding the right time to update systems without interrupting users How long will patches take to roll out?

The right degree of configurability Patch management should be configurable not only by Windows type but by network, region, user, group, preferences, and more. Having an easy to approach process Is your patch management process a pile of scripts or an Ansible playbook? Managing all Windows deployments in one place Being able to patch all different Windows flavors e. Being able to find the right overview of organizational insights What other information do you need on each Windows instance?

Windows-Produced Patch Management Products Microsoft has a number of their own branded Microsoft patching tools that you can use to manage enterprise patch rollouts for their suite of Windows operating systems. These include: Windows Update This is the Microsoft automated patch management standalone service that allows you to manage patching on each machine.

Is the solution well maintained? Who is the patch management vendor? Device Management Windows. Continue Learning with Related Posts. Visit the Search Page. Continue Learning with our Newsletter.