The risks of relying solely on software vendors’ auto-update mechanisms
The risks of relying solely on software vendors’ auto-update mechanisms
Many organizations entrust security updates to software vendors, hoping software vulnerabilities will be addressed promptly and precisely. While such a move does hold merit, it also exposes organizations to security risks. Although the process is automated, security managers and IT teams have no control over when or how the updates will be applied.
The lack of control and oversight on the patching activity can leave an organization in the dark about its actual vulnerability status. In this article, we’ll explore how the auto-update mechanism works, its limitations, and what you can do to protect your devices better.
Why do organizations rely on vendor’s auto-update mechanism?
Understandably, auto-updating all software deployed in an organization is an attractive proposition. With an automated mechanism, patches will be deployed in a timely manner without manual intervention. For organizations, such convenience means they don’t need to invest additional resources to mitigate software vulnerabilities.
However, such thoughts are often proven false in the latter stage. Also, not all security updates are deployed successfully. For example, Acronis True Image, a disk backup utility, failed to securely check and update itself successfully, which presents security gaps that bad actors could exploit.
Key risks of sole reliance on auto-updates
While individual vendors’ auto-update mechanism seems effective on paper, it can pose security risks, operational disruptions, and other challenges.
No control over the update schedule
When you use the vendor’s security update feature, you have no control over when the update will be deployed. As such, an update might happen at the most inconvenient time, which disrupts operational workflow.
Another circumstance that might impact organizations is delayed updates, which leave the software in some devices to remain unpatched. ENISA has ranked unpatched software as one of the gravest threats towards 2030. And such incidents can gravely compromise an organization’s digital assets.
Security blind spots
Often, we assume that an application is secure just because a patch has been applied, but this is not always true. Trusting your digital asset’s security to automated vendor-side patching might leave some vulnerabilities unaddressed.
Limited visibilty
Third-party software vendors don’t provide patching reports. At most, you’ll only be aware of a security update after the software is patched. Because of that, IT teams face challenges in knowing what is being updated. Moreover, they can’t generate a comprehensive report for audit and compliance purposes.
Compatibility issues
Another potential operations challenge is applying patches that are not compatible with your operating environment. Or, sometimes, the patch itself is unstable. Either way, both can disrupt workflow, causing productivity and financial losses.
Best practices for managing updates
Evidently, rather than relying on software vendors’ patching mechanisms, organizations need a unified approach to applying software updates. This way, they can:
- control the entire software update workflow.
- test all software updates before applying them.
- incorporate human oversight to reduce operational risks.
- gain visibility to updates with real-time monitoring and comprehensive reports.
And this brings us to the merit of using an automated patch management solution like Secteer VulnDetect. With VulnDetect, you can ensure all connected devices are patched without jeopardizing productivity, compliance, and security.