In May 2017, the entire world plunged into chaos. The WannaCry ransomware ravaged through close to 300,000 systems and 200,000 victims, shutting down networks, causing chaos and demanding payment to give data back. Just a month later, another cyber attack, this time called NoPetya, ravaged through much of the European nations, primary targeting Ukraine but also affecting France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom.
Both these attacks were caused by the EternalBlue exploit which exploited the vulnerability in SMB 1 (Server Message Block) protocol of Windows. All the security patches for these vulnerabilities had been released but those affected had not installed the patches. And that, in a nutshell, provides the answer to the question posed in the title: What happens when you don’t patch your software?
No patch, no security
In a nutshell, you could lose your data, at best. And at worst, you could be the victim of a global cyber attack causing you millions of dollars of losses in both damage and reputation.
The importance of patch management in the current cybersecurity environment cannot be underestimated by organizations today. The world of cyber threats is a rapidly evolving and dynamic one. Hackers are hard at work at every hour and at every minute trying furiously to find vulnerabilities into the systems used by millions of organizations all over the world. The minute one vulnerability is found, it is exploited mercilessly.
And it’s not just about “patching” up vulnerabilities. Indefinitely delaying patches means systems are missing out on:
Critical Software Updates that will help bring your software up to speed with market conditions
New Features that will probably add to productivity and help the software match up to its competitors
Faster systems thanks to new updates and patches deleting old unusable temporary data and giving the system more speed
Data protection because software gets outdated almost the day it is released with hackers trying to find ways to hack data. Patches can add more data protection features by trying to second-guess hackers.
Risk of recovery cost as it just needs one successful intrusion through an unpatched vulnerability to cause devastation to your system. According to an estimate, the average cost of a data breach per compromised record was $148 and it took organizations 196 days, on average, to detect a breach.
Why EPS is the solution
This is why organizations should employ a powerful cybersecurity solution to ensure that their systems always remain patched. Seqrite’s Endpoint Security (EPS) offers a great solution in this regard – it is a simple and comprehensive security solution for workstations, laptops, and servers. EPS’s Vulnerability Scan feature scans known vulnerabilities of installed applications and operating systems in the network in real time. If a vulnerability is detected, notifications regarding an unpatched OS are sent. The Patch Management tool offers a centralized patch management strategy to remediate all application vulnerability patching needs.
The Dashboard on the EPS solution provides a quick snapshot for administrators regarding the health of the system. Under the “Security” tab on the Dashboard, the Patch Management option provides the number of missing and installed patches by severity. Under the Clients page in the EPS Web console, users also have the option to install missing patches on selected endpoints. A list of missing patches will show with the list filtered according to the following parameters of severity: Critical, Important, Moderate, Low and Unspecified. The results can also be filtered according to categories such as Security Updates, Updates Rollups, Service Packs, Feature Packs, etc.
Hence it is quite clear that Seqrite’s Endpoint Security (EPS) offers a comprehensive solution to solve an organization’s patch management woes. By offering comprehensive endpoint and data protection in one integrated solution, it offers higher scalability and enhanced security for enterprises even if they are running multiple OS platforms.
As an IT security partner for your business, Seqrite provides comprehensive security from advanced cyber threats. To know more
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