Lincoln City Libraries is an essential part of the local community’s life. While each branch upholds its unique ambiance and culture, the library team aims to deliver a uniform experience to all its patrons regardless of the location, which includes digitally safe and user-friendly utilization of computer facilities.

After the pandemic, the library has been noticing an increased interest from locals returning to library spaces and activities, so the Lincoln City Libraries IT team strives to maximize the value for their patrons by providing new useful digital tools and applications on public computers located across the branches. However, keeping these machines secure became difficult.

In particular, the IT team lacked a reliable automated solution to manage updates for third-party applications on public computers. Andrew Inbody, Systems Specialist at Lincoln City Libraries, explains, “Third-party applications patching was our biggest pain point. It required a lot of manual updates, double-checking, scheduling, and working overtime to avoid interruptions to patrons’ experience.” The manual approach the IT team was using could not allow them to provide a consistent user experience across all branches and even exposed them to security risks due to unpatched vulnerabilities that could affect library visitors. “Patron’s data privacy and security is one of our top priorities. If our patrons can’t trust that the library is taking care of them, they’re not going to come and utilize our services,” adds Andrew.

To ensure security and a seamless visitor experience, Andrew started looking for a solution that would help the IT team automate patching for third-party applications on public computers more effectively.

Andrew evaluated several solutions, including NinjaOne and Atera, and ultimately chose Action1. He especially appreciated Action1’s extensive built-in Software Repository, which empowered him to streamline third-party patching, as well as the overall platform’s simplicity.

With Action1, Andrew and his colleagues have established a robust patch management program to keep both public and internal endpoints updated and secure. Thanks to Action1’s policy-based automations and reporting capabilities, they can now proactively detect missing updates, gain real-time visibility into critical vulnerabilities, and streamline patching of third-party applications. “Now we can gear our approach towards the necessity of the patches rather than our team’s time availability,” says Andrew. This not only enhances security on endpoints, but also enables the team to provide a consistent experience for patrons by ensuring that the same set and version of applications is installed on every public computer, regardless of its location.

Andrew especially appreciates Action1’s built-in Software Repository, which covers every application they have on public computers. “It was a huge selling point for us – seeing the scale of the Software Repository and knowing there would be no gaps in our patching because all the software installed is now handled by Action1,” he says. Additionally, the Software Repository allows them to add and manage custom software packages for niche applications for internal use.

With Action1, the IT team reduced the time on managing updates for third-party apps by threefold. Andrew explains, “We used to spend 48 hours quarterly on third-party patching across all branches. With Action1’s automation, we’ve been able to cut that down to 8 hours.”

Moreover, the IT team now relies on Action1 as a single solution to patch both OS and third-party applications, as they found the platform to be more efficient than the solutions set they utilized previously. As a cloud-native platform, Action1 enables the IT team to gain better visibility into every branch and control software updates through a single pane, ensuring the security of their internal and public environment.

As a result, Action1 became an essential solution for Lincoln City Libraries, helping them with their mission to provide the local community with secure and unified access to knowledge, creativity, and connection through their library system across multiple neighborhoods.