The first step in ensuring effective and reliable application of updates is to develop a solid patch management policy that spells out all the processes involved, along with all the participants and their responsibilities.
This article lays out the essential components for creating an effective policy and provides examples of how they should be written.
First, let’s define a patch management policy.
Patch Management Policy Definition
A patch management policy is an IT document that outlines an organization’s strategy for identifying, evaluating, testing, and installing software patches across the IT environment. This policy’s main purpose is to provide a clear framework for managing security patches, software upgrades, and system modifications to protect against potential vulnerabilities, improve system performance, and maintain operational integrity.
The core purpose of a patch management policy is to establish standardized procedures for maintaining current and secure software on a corporate network. It specifies precise protocols for how, when, and which patches will be applied to your systems, creating a methodical process that addresses potential security risks while minimizing disruption to business operations.
What should be included in a patch management policy?
Creating an effective and reliable patch management process needs time, effort, and acknowledgment of the unique needs of your business while maintaining some core strategic principles. Successful patch management policies are a key part of every strong cybersecurity strategy that is able to protect your company’s operating system and applications from hackers and their destructive cyberattacks.
The truth is that an ideal patch management policy can vary, and one that fits a particular organization can be found ineffective for another. In order to help you build your comprehensive patch management policy, we will now cover its core elements:
Comprehensive asset inventory
Maintaining an up-to-date inventory of all operating systems and applications is vital for creating effective an patch management policy, thus your security team will be aware of every detail about your endpoints, such as the OS and application used and their current status.
Detailed tracking will enable your security team to easily identify potential security threats and, of course, respond to them with precision. When creating such detailed asset documentation, it will build the foundation of a successful patch management policy, enabling strategic decision-making during the patching process.
Patch information gathering
The comprehensive inventory of your organization’s IT systems covered by the patch management policy will help identify new patches and provide information from where to find and download them. This framework incorporates critical subprocesses and tools, including security vulnerability monitoring, scheduled patch management audits, patch notification alerts, and detailed reviews of the bug fixes, feature improvements, or security vulnerability issues for which the patch was created.
Roles and Responsibilities
Assigning patch management roles and responsibilities in your security team is important in order to ensure accountability and effectiveness throughout the whole patch management process. Each of your employees should be aware of their specific role and tasks in identifying, evaluating, testing, and implementing patches across the corporate network.
The patch management process involves multiple tasks and phases, which need a clear action plan in order to be successfully and effectively completed. Every organization, no matter the size, will have to regularly perform this process, so it is important to know who does what.
Effective Prioritization within Patch Management Policies
A functional patch management policy must be created on the foundation of clear protocols for assessing and prioritizing security vulnerabilities. It is a well-known fact that not all software patches have equal importance, for that reason, it is absolutely mandatory to address the most critical security threats in a timely manner and then proceed with the less critical ones; this will provide your company with the opportunity to minimize potential business workflow disruptions.
For example, if a critical security patch and a feature update are released on the same day, it is vital to prioritize the security patch, because it will minimize the time window for the vulnerability in your system to be exploited by a hacker. After completing the security patching process, you can proceed with the feature update in order to enhance the performance of your endpoints.
Patch testing
We have to mention the importance of testing patches first on less critical systems, in a virtual or lab environment, or just in a small group of endpoints before being installed on every single endpoint in your organization’s network. Remember always to test patches for bugs and other issues in order to ensure that everything works as expected before deploying them across your entire system.
Patch Deployment
Patch installation should be based on precise procedures for implementing software updates. This policy’s main purpose has to be addressing potential challenges, including system restart requirements and minimal operational interruptions before being installed. Your security team must have clear deployment protocols in order to prevent improper patching practices and ensure smooth implementation.
Patch Compliance and Documentation
Detailed documentation of the patching process is vital, serving multiple strategic purposes. It creates a clear, auditable record that captures essential details: specific actions taken, system improvements achieved, challenges encountered, post-patch verification procedures, and overall network performance impacts.
Continuous Evaluation
One thing is for sure: patch management is an ongoing process; it is not a one-time action and requires constant evaluation and improvement in order to become more effective and beneficial for your organization.
When creating such policy, it must include mechanisms and approaches for regular review and adaptation of existing and new patching strategies. Continuous improvement will guarantee that the organization remains protected against emerging security threats.
Emergency Response Protocols
Immediate and rapid response capabilities are as important as the patch itself for addressing critical security vulnerabilities before escalating into major problems and causing serious damages to IT systems. Your security team must outline clear procedures for emergency patch deployment, including communication protocols and escalation mechanisms, in order to avoid catastrophic scenarios when tough times come.
Patch Management Policy Benefits
We live in a digital world, which provides businesses of all sizes unlimited opportunities to reach their targeted audience in order to find new clients and advertise their services online. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are constantly stalking companies to find and exploit vulnerabilities in their systems and software with the main purpose of gaining personal financial benefits.
In reality, a good patch management policy can act as an effective barrier against hackers, safeguarding organizations’ hardware and software assets from sophisticated cyber attacks.
An effective and reliable patch management policy expands its capabilities beyond routine software patch updates, representing a strategic framework that protects your digital assets and ensures operational continuity by providing the following benefits:
Enhanced Security Posture
An expertly implemented patch management policy is the first line of defense against potential security flaws. By systematically identifying patches and addressing known vulnerabilities, organizations can significantly reduce their exposure to potential security risks.
Effective and error-free patch deployment enables proactive closure of potential entry points, making it a lot more challenging for malicious actors to exploit business systems flaws.
Compliance and Regulatory Adherence
Compliance standards such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR obligate companies to successfully manage vulnerability management and guarantee the data safety of their clients. A robust patch management policy provides a structured mechanism for identifying and addressing cyber threats and other complex security issues in order to meet these regulatory requirements and avoid potential penalties.
Patch management policy helps organizations demonstrate due diligence during audits, showcasing a well-defined approach to prioritizing and resolving potential security challenges before escalating to major system problems.
Cost Optimization
When a company has established a well-defined process of identifying, testing, deploying, and verifying patches, this can guarantee promptly prioritizing tasks and efficient resource allocation.
Patch management policies are able to minimize the efforts and costs associated with vulnerability management, which is a time-consuming and sometimes expensive process.
Nowadays, many third-party vendors offer automated patching software, which allows organizations to schedule automatic patch deployments during off-peak hours, reducing manual intervention and potential business downtime and workflow interruptions, which, of course, result in improved operational efficiency and significant cost savings.
Risk Mitigation
An effective patch management policy enables organizations to prioritize vulnerability remediation through strategic risk assessments. By addressing critical vulnerabilities first, companies can reduce the possibility of a security risk in their systems. Thus, avoiding potential financial losses and operational disruptions that could arise from cybercriminal exploitation of unpatched system weaknesses.
Establishing Organizational Accountability
A comprehensive patch management policy establishes clear organizational roles and delineates responsibilities for teams involved in vulnerability remediation. By defining precise accountability mechanisms, the policy enables systematic oversight of patch deployment processes.
Regular policy reviews incorporate stakeholder feedback, lessons learned, and emerging threat landscape insights to support continuous improvement. This structured approach creates and shows a culture of security responsibility, ensuring consistent patch application and maintaining organizational vigilance against potential system vulnerabilities.
Standardization and Consistency
Equipping your organization with a robust patch management policy creates uniform standards for vulnerability remediation across all of your systems and environments. By implementing consistent practices through advanced patch management tools, your company eliminates potential inconsistencies that could expose critical assets to a variety of security risks.
The patch management program standardizes processes, enhancing team collaboration, simplifying training efforts, and improving overall communication among stakeholders.
How to create a patch management policy?
Creating a patch management policy is an essential step to ensure that your organization systematically and efficiently applies security and software updates. Here’s a guide to help you create an effective patch management policy:
Scope
This patch management policy (hereinafter, “the Policy”) defines the process for updating and storing versions of all test and production information systems (hereinafter, “the Systems”).
Goal
The goal of the policy is to strengthen the company’s information security by keeping all the systems as up to date as possible and to minimize maintenance errors in order to minimize the likelihood of malicious actors successfully using exploits to attack the company. The policy is also intended to ensure the smooth operation of the systems.
General Provisions
Members of the Cybersecurity (CS) department are responsible for updating the systems. This work is to be performed in conjunction with the Information Technology (IT) department. The update process includes:
- Identifying all software, information, objects, databases, and hardware in the systems that require updates
- Identifying the core stakeholders for each system
- Identifying maintenance days for each system
- Obtaining formal approval from the system stakeholders before starting the update process
- Gaining temporary, least-privileged access to each target system to perform its updates
- Gaining authorization from the system owner for updates in the test environment
- Checking the test environment’s availability and functionality after the update and rolling back the changes if something goes wrong
- Gaining authorization from the system owner for updates in the production environment
- Checking the production environment’s availability and functionality after the update and rolling back the changes if something goes wrong
- Monitoring the update process
- Ensuring that the system’s technical documentation is revised after each update
Request for Update
- Update requests are submitted electronically by the CS department in the project management system. The request must include:
- The name of the update officer from the CS department
- The name of the system and its owner
- The name of the update operator from the IT department
- Date of test environment update
- Date of production environment update
- Update details and purpose
- Possible system downtime time period
- Brief technical description of the update
- Each update request is recorded in the project management system.
- The update must be approved by the systems owner.
- The update request is assigned to the responsible IT department.
- The CS department must keep an update control log that registers update requests and tracks the status of requests.
Updating the Test Environment of the System
- The CS department sends the update package or a link to the updates to the IT department via the project management system.
- Updating of the test environment of the system is performed by the IT department in cooperation with the CS department at the scheduled date and time.
- Representatives of the IT department check that the test system works as intended:
- If the test environment of the system is updated successfully, the update is recorded in the project management system.
- If problems are found, they are recorded in detail along with how critical they are. The CS department and the system owner analyze this information, assess the risk, and determine whether to install the update in the production environment and record the decision and reasoning in the project management system.
- After the release of a new software version, the IT department checks the update again in the test environment to exclude new errors and records the results in the project management system.
- The system owner acknowledges the conclusion of the test environment update.
Updating the Production Environment of the System
After functionality verification in the test environment and approval of the system owner, the IT department finalizes the upgrade plan for the production environment.
- The plan details the date of the upgrade, its duration, participants, and the list of recipients to be notified.
- The plan is coordinated with the CS department and the system owner.
- After approval of the plan by the IT department, an announcement of the unavailability of the system and planned work shall be sent by email to all system users at least 24 hours in advance.
- The IT department updates the prod environment of the system in the presence of the system owners.
- The IT department and the system owner check that the system works as intended. If problems are found, the system owner decides how critical they are to the operation and approves a rollback if needed.
- The IT department records the results in the project management system and notifies the CS department.
Version History of the Policy
Version history of a patch management policy is a documentation process that chronicles an organization’s cybersecurity strategy evolution. It provides a comprehensive record of policy modifications, capturing critical details including version number, modification date, and the specific individual responsible for each change.
This systematic approach offers significant organizational benefits by creating a transparent, traceable framework for managing patch management policies. By maintaining a detailed version history, your organization can effectively track policy development, support audit and compliance requirements, and ensure robust accountability.
This kind of documentation enables continuous improvement of cybersecurity protocols, serving as a strategic tool for maintaining and enhancing the organization’s security posture.
Follow these Patch Management Policy Best Practices
Creating an effective and reliable patch management policy is definitely not an easy task, but there is a way to ease the process; this can be achieved through following these best practices:
Start with a Strategic Template
Developing an effective patch management policy doesn’t mean starting from scratch. Most organizations nowadays follow a similar core approach to managing software updates.
Meaning that your security teams can use existing patch management policy templates from reliable sources or software vendors, then customize them in order to fit your specific organizational needs. This approach saves time and ensures you’re building on proven best practices.
The second option is to start building an entirely new patch management policy by following the steps and information provided above about “How to create a patch management policy.”
Comprehensive Asset Classification
Understanding your technological ecosystem is one of the most important factors to consider in order to create a successful and effective patch management policy. For that reason your organization must create a detailed inventory that classifies systems based on their criticality to business operations.
It is a fact that not all systems are created equal—production environments require different patch management strategies compared to development systems. Further, it is mandatory to prioritize assets based on their potential impact, ensuring that the most critical systems always receive immediate attention.
Robust System Recovery Planning
Patch management isn’t just about updating—it’s about managing potential risks. Develop clear system restore procedures that outline exact steps for rolling back updates if they cause system failures. You cannot expect that every single patch will always work as planned; sometimes unpredicted issues can occur throughout the patching process, and in such cases it is mandatory to have on your side a system recovery plan.
Thus, your security team will be able to revert the system to the healthy state before the patch was deployed. Define acceptable target time to recover MTTR (mean time to repair) and SLAs (service-level agreements) that provide clear expectations for restoring a failed system.
Production Environment Considerations
Most organizations operate with both production and development environments, each presenting unique vulnerability challenges and business criticality. Production systems demand high availability, while development environments serve as testing grounds for potential updates.
A strategic patch management approach recognizes the distinct requirements of these systems. Production environments require comprehensive backup strategies and highly skilled security teams capable of rapid recovery during patch-related disruptions.
Full backups are essential, enabling seamless system rollback if patches introduce unexpected issues to any of your devices, thus guaranteeing system reliability and reducing downtime.
Development environments have a crucial validation role. Security teams use them to rigorously test software updates across multiple operating system versions. This comprehensive testing phase identifies potential incompatibilities before deployment, preventing potential disruptions in production systems.
By understanding and addressing these differences between production and development environments, organizations can create more resilient, adaptive patch management strategies that minimize risk and maintain operational continuity.
Continuous Monitoring and Improvement
Patch management is a continuous process, not a one-time task, so it is important to implement ongoing monitoring mechanisms that track patch effectiveness, system key performance indicators, and emerging vulnerabilities.
Further, regularly review and update your policy to address new technological challenges and threats, so you can have peace of mind knowing your organization will be able to properly handle unexpected situations when they occur.
Automation and Efficiency
Automation is able to streamline patch management processes and improve their efficiency. However, human oversight is required to ensure critical decisions aren’t left entirely to automated deployment tools, where the goal is to create a balanced approach that combines technological efficiency with strategic human insight.
By following and implementing these best practices, organizations can transform patch management from a reactive maintenance task into a proactive security strategy. The key is creating a flexible, comprehensive approach that adapts to the evolving cyber threats while maintaining robust and reliable system protection.
Patch Policy Configuration Management
Simply writing a patch management policy won’t make patching more reliable or less time-consuming—you need an automated patch management solution.
Action1 enables IT teams to actually implement their organization’s patch management policy and automate the patch distribution process. For example, they can efficiently:
- Deploy patches either upon explicit approval or automatically after a specified number of days since their release.
- Schedule a reboot for a convenient time or choose to skip it altogether.
- Capability for deploying patches to all endpoints or to specific groups of machines.
- Determine the update delivery schedule to avoid business disruptions and lost productivity.
See for yourself just how easy effective patch management can be. You can use Action1 on 100 endpoints free of charge with no functionality limitations.
