The Importance of Patches and Updates

Introduction

Threat actors have found a way to automate attacks of recently disclosed vulnerabilities and execute them rapidly. Bad actors have streamlined their attack methods to utilize scripts and AI to automatically grab information regarding a newly disclosed vulnerability and help them determine if it’s worth exploitation.

If it’s determined to be worth exploiting, the bad actor will attempt to exploit the vulnerability as soon as they can and in some cases before a patch is deployed. Making it a race between blue team and red team. If the blue team does not push patches in time, the result can be detrimental.

Importance of Patches

Patches help ensure your device is up to date and safeguarded from the latest threats. The cyber world is an ever changing landscape and without regular patches your device will be prone to the most current vulnerabilities. Patches secure your device against recent vulnerabilities found. As time passes, bad actors will find new methods to exploit devices leading to newfound vulnerabilities.

A newly discovered vulnerability being executed for the first time is also called a zero day attack. This leads to a need of another patch to be made on affected devices. As long as this never ending cycle continues, the importance of patches is paramount. Patches are necessary to avoid exploitation from bad actors and can assist in guarding against new threats.

Speed is Crucial

The speed of how fast patches are deployed can be very critical. New vulnerabilities found are being exploited by bad actors within days and even in some cases within hours. Sometimes, a bad actor can exploit a vulnerability before a patch is even available.

According to multiple industry sources, 50 to 61 percent of recently discovered vulnerabilities are exploited within 48 hours. As soon as a vulnerability is disclosed, bad actors get to work with the hope of finding an unpatched device where that vulnerability is present.

Potential Solutions

There are a few ways of guarding oneself against these recent attacks. One way could be to manually push out patches or utilize a ticket based system to help track patches on certain devices. Using this approach, security teams can assess which patches to roll out and to test patches to ensure they are compatible with the device and work as expected.

However, this solution is most likely too slow to defend against malicious actors ,but can prevent bad patches from being pushed. Pushing patches without testing them can result in loss of data, system outages, performance deterioration. Bad actors are deploying their attacks almost as soon as the newly found vulnerability is disclosed.

Conclusion

Staying up to date with patches could determine whether or not a compromise occurs within your environment. Whether or not to automate patch deployment to apply patches soon after they are available or manually to push out patches & test them first depends on your risk tolerance and environment. Regardless of which option you choose, it is critical to apply patches in timely manner to prevent attacks from bad actors.