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Security Patch Management |
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Problem: |
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It’s a Monday
morning, you are on your way to work, and you have had a great weekend. You
feel revived and you want to take advantage of your added energy and put this to good business use, like the good employee you are of course.
You get into the office and everyone is in a panic. The systems aren’t
working properly, the servers are rebooting without notice, and your fellow
employees have important deadlines quickly approaching. Your company’s IT
staff is scrambling from machine to machine to troubleshoot the problem, or
worse yet, your company doesn’t have an IT staff and you are waiting for
your IT support company to return your calls. Now what? |
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Where are We?: |
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Ok, let’s take a
quick step back. Solving your existing issue should, of course, be your first
concern. How you got to this point and what to do about it should be the
second. After your organization has resolved the existing issues, you can
begin to review your existing infrastructure and determine where you went
wrong (or where THEY went wrong).
NOTE: Keep in mind!! NO
NETWORK OR SYSTEM IS 100% SECURE. We're not sure how much more we can stress
this point. Remember the ‘idiot theory’: as soon as you build an
idiot-proof system, they end up producing a better idiot. This holds true
for hackers and security measures. Just because they release additional
security patches doesn’t mean you are now safe. Someone is going to find
yet another security hole.
Before we
continue, let us just throw one more point at you to get you concerned.
Money. Think about it. You have 15 employees, each getting paid
approximately $15/hour, not including benefits, unemployment compensation, and
other taxes. If your network is down for 4 hours, you have just lost a minimum
of $900.00, plus the possibility of losing clients or new bids because you
couldn’t meet the deadline requirements. Our assumption is that most
businesses today can’t afford an average hourly loss of $15/hour per
employee.
We have had two
clients in the past that insisted on doing their own patch management.
Shortly after contracting a virus that spread to all machines on the
network, and after almost a full week of up/down time, they gave up.
Needless to say, we now do their patch management and haven’t had any
issues to date. So, can we now all agree that system downtime isn’t good
for anyone? We hope so… |
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Resolution: |
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When an office
server starts causing issues, or your client machines begin acting up, the
first thing to check is virus activity and security breaches. We have found
that it is about 50/50 between security breaches in the client’s machines
and a virus running loose. Isolation is the key though. We isolate the
servers, and then isolate each machine. After we feel we have tested,
cleaned, updated, and protected the servers, we add them to the network. We
then continue to do this with each machine until we are back up and running
100%. The key is isolation and to bring up the most important machines
first.
Managing numerous networks across varied platforms, hardware, and user
roles/types, it becomes more and more apparent that security patch
management is vital to the survival of a business class network. Downtime
that results from a security breach or a virus can be substantial, if the
necessary security precautions and measures are not taken. The key to
security patch management is being ‘proactive’.
We provide a
service to our clients that we have labeled ‘Isolation Protection’. We host
our client’s websites and email services and the domains associated with
their companies. (ie. compdevsys.com, etc.) Our servers are temporary
storage facilities for their email, which means we control all
incoming/outgoing messages. If someone tries to attack one of our client’s
domains, they are actually attacking our servers. We update them daily for
antivirus and security patches, and we have alternate forms of protection
also in place.
The servers at
our client’s sites only interact with the Internet when they download their
user’s email. And when they download email, they are communicating with our
servers only. Their internal servers and workstations cannot be located or
contacted by computers or servers outside of their network without their
interaction. Essentially, they are protected from the Internet, because
they are isolated and almost invisible. Hence the term ‘Isolation
Protection’.
Installing
Microsoft Windows security patches is very important. They release those
patches because a problem (vulnerability) was found in their software.
‘Kudos’ to Microsoft for making the updates so easy for us end-users. Just
go to
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and follow the instructions. If you
are unsure of how to update your machine, contact your local IT source and
have them assist you, or contact our tech support line for further
assistance. |
| Summary: |
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To date, Computer
Development Systems, LLC hasn’t had a single virus outbreak or security
breach for any of the client networks or computers, which we manage solely,
over the last 8 years. This is quite an impressive record, but we don’t
expect it to last forever. We aren’t being pessimistic, we are being
realistic. Someone sooner or later will develop a virus that will affect
one or more of our client’s networks.
The difference is
that we are prepared. We know what to do when something happens, and we
know how to recover from it quickly and efficiently. We have backup
procedures in place for our client’s data and our data at our site. We have
specific plans on how to combat an outbreak and how to update the machines
in the event of an attack. The question is, ‘Does your company have a plan
in place to defend and recover from an attack or virus outbreak?’ If not,
please take the time and invest in such a plan. Just ask yourself, ‘If my
network was attacked by a virus or security breach today, is it ok to lose
everything I have?’ If not, then we think it is time for that plan.
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Visit
www.compdevsys.com! |
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Phone: (717) 932-5395
Phone: (717) 932-5395