Home Startups A patch in time saves nine

A patch in time saves nine

Evil Internet Minute: 1.5 cyberattacks on Computers with an Internet Connection

Unpatched and outdated software are one of the biggest challenges of any cybersecurity corporation. The recent ransomware attack WannaCry made use of this vulnerability infecting computers in over 150 countries and crippling entire grids in many smaller states.

“The primary reasons so many vulnerabilities are left unpatched by companies is the time and resources required to manually identify, test, and deploy patches,” stated Jay Prassl, Automox CEO in a release. “We found that existing solutions focus almost exclusively on scanning and reporting on the state of a company’s infrastructure. These products largely generate lots of bad news, but don’t actually fix the problem by patching the endpoint to bring it into compliance. This is the core reason we built Automox, to help companies of every size address this challenge.”

Automox offers a fully automated closed loop patching platform. These are capable of patching any OS, software, at any location. The Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report suggests that more than 90 percent of vulnerabilities date back to at least a year, with 20 percent of them dating back to even a decade. Here remediation is the key.

As the IT function has evolved and changed in the cloud era, the process for patching has remained the same — a manual and reactive process that leaves companies vulnerable to cyber-attacks. According to a recent cybersecurity report, only 72 of every 1000 threats are remediated, leaving nearly 92 percent of threats unpatched and open to vulnerabilities.

“For organizations of every size, the simplest and most effective step they can take to reduce their attack surface and improve their security posture is to consistently patch both their operating systems and applications,” Joe McManus, Senior Cyber Security Researcher with CERT and Automox CISO, added.