Modern businesses, regardless of size, rely on their server operating systems for daily operations. For instance, think of your organization as a fortress, with servers as its gates. Leaving these gates unsecured, opens up the possibility for a major security breach. It is much like leaving your valuables unattended in a public space. The dependency on servers makes it a continuous responsibility to protect these systems from vulnerabilities.
Moreover, recent statistics reveal that in 2024, over 90% of successful attacks exploited unpatched vulnerabilities[1]—a figure that underscores just how critical timely patching is for preventing breaches and minimizing risks. This is where server patching acts as the savior that safeguards these gates (servers), preventing attacks and ensuring the security of your digital assets.
Let’s explore the essentials of server patching, its importance, working, and best practices, and discover how Scalefusion UEM can elevate your server patching process.
What is server patching?
Server Patching applies patches that combat vulnerabilities, fix known bugs, and resolve security breaches in the server operating system such as Windows Server 2022. The primary goal of these patches is to improve system security, stability, and performance. Regular server patching is essential for maintaining a secure and reliable IT infrastructure. It protects the server from potential threats and safeguards data from malicious exploits.
| Did You Know? |
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| A patch and an update are two different concepts. A patch is a targeted fix for a specific issue or vulnerability, while an update is a more comprehensive upgrade that includes various improvements and changes. Patches are usually smaller and quicker to install, as they only address specific problems. |
Why is Server Patching Needed?
Server patching is mandatory for maintaining a secure and reliable IT infrastructure. It serves multiple purposes that go beyond just fixing bugs:
a. Protection Against Vulnerability Attacks: Patches are designed to fix security gaps in server operating systems and applications, protecting against potential attacks like malware, ransomware, and other potential threats that exploit known vulnerabilities.
b. Safeguarding Organizational Data: By addressing security flaws, patching ensures sensitive organizational data remains protected from unauthorized access, breaches, and leaks, which could otherwise lead to significant reputational and financial damage.
c. Ensuring Business Continuity and Minimizing Downtime: Regular server patching helps prevent system failures, software crashes, and security breaches that could disrupt business operations, keeping services up and running without prolonged downtime.
d. Reducing Financial Risks: Inadequate patching can lead to hefty breaches and downtime, resulting in financial penalties, lost business opportunities, or damage control. Timely patches minimize these risks and help protect the organization’s security posture from the bottom line.
e. Achieving Regulatory Compliance: Many industries are bound by regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR that require maintaining updated security measures for data protection. Regular patching ensures compliance with industry standards and helps avoid legal penalties.
f. Enhancing System Performance and Reliability: Patches also include performance improvements and bug fixes, ensuring servers run efficiently and reliably. This optimizes overall system performance, providing users with a seamless experience and supporting business goals.
Types of server patches
Based on their purpose and the issues they address, server patches are mainly of three types:
a. Security patches: Address specific vulnerabilities that threat actors can exploit to gain unauthorized access, compromise data, or propagate malware. These patches enable organizations to protect their servers from breaches and maintain a secure operational environment.
b. Bug fixes: Resolve bugs or issues that can cause severe damage to the operating system and address server errors that can cause performance or stability issues.
c. Feature update: Allows you to upgrade from an outdated operating system to a current version while keeping your settings, server roles, and data intact. You must evaluate the impact of feature patches and test them thoroughly before applying them to the server system.
How does the server patching process work?
Initially, the server patching process might seem like a task needing IT expertise. However, it is a fundamental security measure that can be executed with basic technological knowledge. The process of server patching has five steps:
1. Identifying patching requirements: Identify all unpatched servers in your network, including on-prem, cloud, and virtual. Once the unpatched servers are identified, perform a vulnerability scan for those servers.
2. Assessment and planning: Evaluate servers based on the severity of their vulnerability. For example, production servers or servers handling company resources and data are of higher priority than development or testing servers. The more critical the server, the greater the impact of a vulnerability or an outage.
Then, assess any patch dependencies on other software. Reviewing such dependencies helps avoid compatibility issues during deployment. Lastly, plan a deployment time that does not disrupt the ongoing business operations.
3. Testing server patches: Apply the server patches in the test environment and monitor for any issues or performance impacts. Record any changes in system behavior or performance issues post-patch. This allows you to address potential problems before rolling out patches to production servers.
4. Patch deployment: Once the patch has been tested and is ready for deployment, initiate the patch installation process through a patch management or server patching software.
5. Verification and monitoring: After patching the servers, ensure that the vulnerabilities have been addressed. Verify that all servers, applications, services, and dependencies are functioning properly.
Ensure that the patched servers comply with internal and regulatory standards. Finally, continue monitoring the patched servers for ongoing stability and performance.
IT teams should refer to guidelines specific to their operating environments to gain a deeper understanding of how these processes apply to different server types, such as Windows server patching.
Best Practices for Server Patching
1. Establish a patch management policy
Creating a patch management policy is essential for effective server patching in your IT environment. This policy outlines the procedures to identify, apply, and verify server patches. A clear patch management policy ensures that patches are applied consistently and that the server’s security, stability, and performance are maintained.
Your policy must specify actions for identifying and applying necessary patches. This protects your servers, minimizes risks, and reduces downtime. Regular patching helps maintain an optimal server environment, safeguarding your IT infrastructure from vulnerabilities and malicious threats.
2. Maintain an inventory of assets
Maintaining an accurate record of hardware and software assets across the network is essential for effective patching. This inventory ensures that all relevant servers are accounted for in the patching process and no critical infrastructures are overlooked.
3. Have a risk-based approach to server patching
Adopting a risk-based approach is essential for effective server patch management. This involves assessing vulnerabilities in servers, understanding how likely they are to be exploited, and considering their potential impact on server performance and security.
Since it is not feasible to patch every single vulnerability, a risk-based approach helps IT teams prioritize based on urgency and risk. Critical patches should be applied immediately, while less urgent updates can be scheduled for later. By evaluating risks and potential impacts, IT teams can prioritize patches to keep servers secure and running smoothly.
4. Create a server patch management schedule
Consistency is essential in server patch management. Setting a routine schedule for checking and applying patches helps mitigate vulnerabilities before exploitation. Ensure that you create a schedule that does not disrupt the business operation, for instance after work hours or during maintenance windows.
Each OS has its patch release cycle—Microsoft, for example, updates on the second Tuesday of each month, while Linux and other applications may vary. To stay current, check for patches at least weekly and subscribe to security alerts, like Microsoft Security Alerts, for notifications of critical patches outside the regular cycle.
A documented schedule should detail the frequency of checks, how patches are obtained, and deployment steps. This ensures servers are patched promptly to maintain a secure and reliable IT environment.
5. Automate server patching
Manual server patching is outdated as it leads to unnecessary time consumption and human errors. Automation speeds up this patching process and ensures that patches are applied consistently across all servers. It enables you to schedule patches and keep a detailed track of the patch status of your servers, which in turn helps take strategic actions related to server patching.
6. Adopt patch management software
Investing in a strong patch management tool is beneficial as it leads to a reliable server patching process. A patch management software centralizes and streamlines the patching workflow. It provides IT teams with a comprehensive view of network health, enabling them to prioritize urgent issues effectively.
Patch management software reduces manual effort, and automates patch deployment thus, saving valuable time. It enables you to create a maintenance window for applying patches. This ensures that server patching does not impact the day-to-day work.
Furthermore, it enhances your security posture by simplifying the patching process for both servers and endpoints. With the right patch management solution in place, you can address vulnerabilities quickly and ensure that the IT environment remains secure and resilient against potential threats.
7. Design a backup server environment
Backups are essential for protecting data, software, and systems in the event of failed patch management. They provide a safe environment to revert to if the primary server encounters failures, damage, or abnormal functionality after a patch is applied.
While testing patches before deployment reduces the likelihood of requiring failovers, issues can still arise during patch application. A backup server environment acts as a safety net, allowing for a quick recovery in case of unexpected disruptions.
Preparing with system backups ensures teams can easily revert to a previous state if a patch fails or causes system instability, preserving operational continuity and data integrity.
8. Test server patches
Before applying patches to production servers, you must test them in a controlled environment. Create a staging or sandbox environment that mirrors the production servers to test patches without disrupting ongoing operations.
Test the patches and closely monitor the system for any signs of disruption. Pay attention to system behavior, performance, and application functionality. This way you ensure that the patch will not negatively impact the server or its associated services, providing you the confidence to deploy it to the actual server.
9. Perform regular audits
Conducting periodic reviews of your patch management process ensures that all servers are up to date with the latest security patches and updates. Audits help identify any remaining gaps in your patching cycle.
Perform regular audits to evaluate the effectiveness of applied patches, and ensure compliance with security standards and regulations. They provide valuable insights into potential vulnerabilities that may have been overlooked, enabling proactive risk management, and leading to a secure overall security posture.
How Scalefusion UEM Facilitates Server Patching?
Scalefusion UEM offers MDM Agent-based Windows Server OS patch management capabilities that allow you to configure server OS patch policy on the managed Windows server devices to ensure that the rollouts are controlled. Some of its salient features are:
1. Patch scheduling
Enables you to define schedules for applying server patches based on time, day, and week. This ensures that patches are applied without interrupting daily operations. You can set automated patching for critical updates, enhancing security and subsequently reducing the IT team’s cognitive load.
2. Sync interval
Allows you to configure the sync interval for checking patch updates. This offers flexibility for how often the Scalefusion MDM agent will check for and apply the latest patches.
3. Force device reboot post-patch deployment
Enables you to configure what the device reboot behavior should be, once a patch is deployed. You can choose to:
- Prompt for Reboot: After a patch is applied, the system will prompt users to reboot their device. This ensures that updates are fully integrated and operational.
- Force after 5 minutes: If the device isn’t rebooted manually, it will automatically restart 5 minutes after the patch installation.
- Force after 10 minutes: Similarly, if the device is still not rebooted, a 10-minute delay will trigger an automatic restart, ensuring the patch is fully applied without further delay.
4. Centralized dashboard for better visibility
Enables you to monitor and manage all patches from a single dashboard. Provides you an optimal visibility of your server inventory. This helps identify the patched and unpatched servers on a single screen. You ensure that the patched servers comply with internal and regulatory standards and monitor the patched servers for ongoing stability and performance.
Enhance Server Patching with Scalefusion UEM
Scalefusion UEM offers a powerful solution for Windows server patch management. You can ensure the security, stability, and performance of your Windows servers within your enterprise environments. As a UEM-integrated Windows server patching software, it streamlines the patching process for Windows Servers while offering endpoint management. Its comprehensive features make it a preferred choice for administrators who aim to secure and optimize their server infrastructure efficiently.
Book a demo or take a 14-day free trial to stay ahead of vulnerabilities and safeguard your Windows servers from emerging threats.
Reference
1. Nikolaroza
