Lumension Guide to

Patch Management Best Practices

With the sophistication and sheer volume of exploits targeting
major applications and operating systems, the speed of
assessment and deployment of security patches across
your complex IT infrastructure is key to mitigating
risks and remediating vulnerabilities. Here are the
Lumension-recommended steps to cure your
patch management headache.

April 2012
WP-EN-04-17-12

Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

Introduction
Laying the Groundwork
1. Discover Assets

2. Agent Maintenance 4
3. Classify Value and Risk

4. Establish Workflow and Groups

5. Identify Test Groups
6. Staff Training

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Before Patch Tuesday

7. Schedule Resources

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8. Reserve Down-Time for Servers 15

9. Watch for Pre-Announcements

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10. Confirm Reporting Up-to-Date

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11. Deploy missing updates and prerequisites

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On Patch Tuesday
12. Study Vendor Information and Patch Tuesday Security Briefings 19
13. Prioritize Potential Patches
14. Change Control

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15. Staged Testing

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16. Installation of the Patches 2 2

After Patch Tuesday

17. Deployment History

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18. Calculate Time to Deploy 25

19. Monitor for Compliance 26
20. Checks and Balances

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21. Metrics Improvement

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

Introduction
Patch and vulnerability management is a core component of your risk mitigation strategy. It is the first and
last line of defense against existing and new exploits laying the foundation from which your AV and other
security technologies work. As the sophistication and sheer volume of exploits targeting operating systems
and major applications increases, the speed of assessment and deployment of security patches is key to
mitigating risks and remediating vulnerabilities and reducing costs.
In this best practice guide, we are going to take a deep dive into a best practice process for patch and vulnerability management, developed by Lumension over thousands of customer engagements. This process
which is flexible and simple enough to be adapted into your environment revolves around the well-known
monthly release of security updates from Microsoft known as Patch Tuesday, and includes:

Laying the Groundwork for a Successful Patch Process

Before Patch Tuesday
On Patch Tuesday
After Patch Tuesday
Every companys Patch Management process is going to be a little bit different, but whats important about these
best practices are: Its a repeatable cycle. Its based on calendar events in this case Microsofts Patch Tuesday.
Its iterative it can be tweaked based on whats learned from previous patch cycles. Its measureable.
Documenting a process for the organization is really the best way to communicate the importance of patching your environment to the rest of the organization. In this best practice guide we chose to base the process
on the well-known Patch Tuesday event, but you can align your patch process with other recurring IT tasks
with equally effective results that works best for your organization.

Laying the Groundwork

This section is about gaining an understanding of the machines under management and preparing the Patch
and Remediation process. At a high level, this means identifying the systems to be managed, defining the
patch-roll out plan, and training the organization on the Patch and Remediation process.

1. Discover Assets
Within Lumension Endpoint Management and Security Suite (L.E.M.S.S.), identif y all hardware
and sof t ware on the net work and categorize them
by platform, applications, depar tment, etc.

Practical Steps:
In L.E.M.S.S., navigate to Discover > Assets
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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

Follow the Discover Assets wizard to set up an Asset Discovery job.

As a best practice, administrators will want to schedule a more frequent recurring scan to identify
new endpoints that enter the network, then a less frequent scan as the number of machines under
management stabilizes

2. Agent Maintenance
Ensure that all endpoint assets in the network have been fully installed with an automated patch solution.
Install new patch management agents where required, if this task has not yet been fully automated with
a group policy, login script or other technique. Identify offline agents and last contact date either inside
L.E.M.S.S. or by running the Endpoint Check-in report in Lumension Reporting Services (LRS), a free,
integrated add-on to L.E.M.S.S.

Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

Practical Steps:
You can either set up a recurring Asset Scan or
an Asset Scan/Install Agents job.

In L.E.M.S.S., navigate to Discover > Assets

or Discover > Assets and Install Agents and
follow the wizard to set up a recurring or onetime job.

Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

We also recommend verifying agent availability and last check-in via LRS:
Run the Asset Management report Endpoint Check-in in LRS.
Select the desired date of last endpoint check-in (Last Contact Date on or before) typically your
current date.

The report displays the list of endpoints that have not checked-in with the server in a given
timeframe.

Ensure that agent communication is established with all the endpoints in your environment.
Review endpoints that have not checked in recently and verify which endpoints need follow-up or
attention prior to rolling out updates (training computers that are off vs. sales guy in field that needs
to check in)

Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

It may also be useful to verify the agent versions and operating systems of your endpoints through
LRS, especially if you are planning to perform an upgrade to a newer version of L.E.M.S.S.:

Run the Operational Report Agent Version and Operating System Distribution in LRS
The report displays the mix of agent versions and operating systems in the endpoint environment,
along with a detailed endpoint count.

Ensure that all desired endpoints are listed, have the expected agent version(s) and communicate
properly.

Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

3. Classify Value and Risk

Determine which systems are most critical to protect based on the assets housed and/or the function they
provide. Define the level of risk by criticality of system and how prone it is to attack.

Practical Steps:
Review your network topology and classify your assets by level of criticality.

4. Establish Workflow and Groups

Determine ownership, permissions needed and responsibilities for threat identification, testing and remediation across security, IT and business units. Define correlating system groups. L.E.M.S.S. will predefine
system groups based on desktops, servers, physical or virtual hardware, as well as operating systems. If
more granular management is required, IT managers can create additional groups based on specific requirements, e.g. if servers are internet-facing, they may be grouped as high-risk but also as limited downtime. Use RBAC controls and set up permissions for desktop patch admin, server patch admin, as well as
individuals who have reporting access only.

Practical Steps:
Determine system ownership, uptime requirements,
and patch windows for these machines. Define the
patch cycle for different managed systems.

D efine users and roles within your organization and

who needs access to which systems.

On the Tools > Users and Roles page, select the

Roles tab and either select and assign existing
role(s) or create new roles.

Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

Next, assign users to the selected role(s) from the Users tab.
Set up your categorized assets in custom groups in L.E.M.S.S.
On the Manage Groups page, click on Custom Groups.
Navigate to View in the upper right corner and select Group

Membership to create a custom group.

Navigate to View in the upper right corner and select Endpoint

Membership to assign endpoints to that group.

Click on Manage to assign endpoints to that group.

Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

Set Hours of Operation (HOP) for managed endpoints that
require a specific patch window.

On the Manage > Agent Policy Sets page, create a new agent
policy and define the hours of operation.

Then, apply that policy to specific endpoints or groups that

require this HOP policy.

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

For machines managed over the WAN, it is recommended to set up a caching proxy per remote
location to cache the package content.

Deploy Lumension Caching Proxy 2.7 for Windows to a target machine in the remote location
Create Agent Policy and set FastPath Servers Both Interval and Define Servers
Manage > Agent Policy Sets > Select Create and Save when completed

Apply Agent Policy to your custom group

Manage Groups > Right-click on the group > Select Policies > Select Add > Select Agent Policy and
click Save

Note: Policy will not set until the next check-in to L.E.M.S.S.
For more information on setting up a caching proxy please review the following resources:
Best Practices Fast Path: KB article 523
Distribution Point (PDP) Does not Cache Large Deployment: KB article 231

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

5. Identify Test Groups

Build a representative sample set of each type of machine based on steps 2 (Agent Maintenance) and 3
(Classify Value and Risk), in readiness for patch testing step 15 (Staged Testing). Make sure your test group
includes a representative sample of platforms under management and includes a representative sample of
applications in the environment, especially machines that have custom, in-house developed applications.
As a best practice, at least one machine from each major group in the organization should be included in a
test group.

Practical Steps:
Once test groups have been identified, create custom groups for
those test groups.

On the Manage Groups page, click on Custom Groups.

Navigate to View in the upper right corner and select Group
Membership to create a custom group.

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

Navigate to View in the upper right corner and select Endpoint Membership, then click on Manage,
select the desired endpoints and click Assign to assign these endpoints to that group.

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

6. Staff Training
Train applicable staff on vulnerability monitoring and remediation techniques. At a minimum, administrators
responsible for deploying Patch updates need to be trained in the Patch and Remediation application. As a
best practice, there should be an internal resource for all employees to learn more about why it is important
to keep machines in the organization fully patched.

Practical Steps:
Use Lumension Learning resources to help build your internal staff training.

Continued

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

Before Patch Tuesday

This section is about preparing the environment for the monthly patch deployment, including industry research on what is expected to be released by Microsoft and other application vendors and assess the impact
of those planned releases to your managed machines.

7. Schedule Resources
Allocate IT resources for Patch Tuesday while also integrating additional patch release schedules from thirdparty software, such as Adobe, Apple (ad hoc), Java and so forth. In addition, review the patching needs of
any internally-developed applications and/or custom patches and consider deploying these patches as part
of the monthly patch cycle.

8. Reserve Down-Time for Servers

Reserve time slots to be able to deploy patch updates to any mission critical servers within 72 hours of the
Patch Tuesday release.

9. Watch for Pre-Announcements

Monitor security sites for pre-announcements of patches and discussion of vulnerabilities and possible
zero-day exploits that they may address from sources such as Lumension Endpoint Intelligence Center
(LEIC), Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), SANS Internet Storm Center, National Vulnerability
Database (NVD), etc.

Practical Steps:
In addition to reviewing vendor sites, we recommend setting up email notifications within L.E.M.S.S. to
receive an email when new vulnerabilities have been replicated to L.E.M.S.S.

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

10. Confirm Reporting Up-to-Date

Review last deployment reports via Lumension Reporting Services (LRS) and make sure all computers
are being regularly scanned. Validate the L.E.M.S.S. application server is actively communicating with the
global subscription service (GSS).

Practical Steps:
To confirm recent deployments and ongoing scanning in LRS:
Run the operational report Deployment Detail
Select the group(s) that you are monitoring
Review success/failure results (Patched and Complete %)
To confirm communication with GSS in L.E.M.S.S.:

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

Go to the Tools > Subscription Updates page.

Confirm that the Successful column shows true, indicating successful replication.
If false is shown in any of the rows, troubleshoot to ensure replication.

11. Deploy missing updates and prerequisites

Determine if your software is fully updated or if there are any missing Service Packs, hotfixes or rollups
from prior months that are still outstanding. Remember that some patches wont install if you have missing prerequisites. Check that each machine in the defined group has received the latest Service Pack
or update needed.

Practical Steps:
To verify if your software is fully
updated:

In L.E.M.S.S., go to the Review

> Software > Service Packs
(Software Installers / Updates)
page and investigate any
missing service packs, hotfixes
or rollups from prior months that

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

are still outstanding.

Deploy missing updates:

Deploy any missing updates directly from the page above by selecting the missing patches and
clicking on Deploy.

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

On Patch Tuesday
This section outlines the steps to prioritize the Security Patches released by Microsoft and other application
vendors and to deploy those patches out to the machines managed in your environment.

12. Study Vendor Information and Patch Tuesday Security Briefings

Microsoft and other vendors provide webinars, email alerts and comprehensive online information on all new Patch
Tuesday updates.
Lumension offers a monthly Patch Tuesday Security Briefing as well as other patching guidance on the
Lumension Optimal Security Blog, the Lumension Patch Tuesday Alerts webpage and in the Patch Tuesday
newsletter.
Important information to consider when understanding the impact of Patch Tuesday on your environment includes:

What is the bulletin severity rating?

Is the vulnerability known / publicly disclosed at the time of release?
Does the vendor know of any active exploits at the time of release?
How easily can the vulnerability be exploited once the bulletin is been released?

13. Prioritize Potential Patches

With the vendor information gathered in step 12 (Study Vendor Information and Patch Tuesday Security Briefings), use patch impact (Critical, Important, etc.), asset risk and value to prioritize your systems for patch testing
and deployment. Understand the applicability and impact of deploying these patches to your environment, especially critical machines. When making this assessment, consider:
1. Threat Level;
2. Known Active Exploits in the Wild;
3. Risk of Compromise;
4. Consequences of Compromise.

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

Practical Steps:
To review the released Patch Tuesday patches and their applicability in your endpoint
environment, we recommend you use LRS and run the report Patch Release by Vendor

The report provides a high-level overview of the applicability of the released bulletins to your
managed endpoints and groups. It reflects the severity of and expected workload for that months
Patch Tuesday release and the organizations patch status.

When choosing your parameters, we recommend selecting all the criticalities and the first day of the
month. The report will then display the number of vulnerability patches and content released by each
vendor in the top section and the vulnerability patches and content applicable to your environment in
the Applicable section directly below.

14. Change Control

Follow any internal planning and approval processes for agreeing on patch deployment. This may include
following different processes for the server side than for the desktop side. Some organizations will have different change control processes for desktop machines than for server machines due to high uptime requirements for servers or to limit reboot interruptions for desktop users.

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

15. Staged Testing

Testing each patch is vital; automated deployment is very risky and not advised. Be certain to test the patch
in each environment of your previously defined groups and deploy the patches in phases. In addition, before remediation, and especially if there is a lack of time or resources to perform a test on the patch before
deploying it on a production system, there is great benefit in joining patch user forums and learning what
experiences others have had in installing or using the patch.

Practical Steps:
D eploy applicable bulletins to test groups configured in step 5 (Identify Test Groups) above.
Ensure successful deployment before rollout to additional groups in the environment.
Pay special attention to impact to custom-developed, internal applications, especially when deploying
Java updates.

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16. Installation of the Patches

Stage deployments by system groups and prioritization. Start with smaller, low-risk groups, and validate that
no problems occur, and then work your way to larger and higher-risk areas of the network. As a best practice, and especially if your servers have a limited maintenance window, it is recommended to cache all the
patch content before deployment. If deployments are scheduled off-hours, take advantage of Wake-on-LAN
settings to wake up any powered-down endpoints and ensure that they receive the content.

Practical Steps:
In L.E.M.S.S., go to the Review >
Vulnerabilities > New Vulnerabilities page,
select content applicable to your environment
and cache the packages associated with
those binaries by selecting the bulletins and
clicking on the Update Cache button.

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

Go to the Manage Groups page under the Vulnerabilities view
and filter for new critical bulletins. Deploy bulletins that are
applicable to that target group.

After successful deployment, move on to other groups in your

patching plan.

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Lumension Guide to Patch Management Best Practices

After Patch Tuesday

This section is about assessing the success of the Patch and Remediation deployments in your environment.

17. Deployment History

Maintain accurate records of all patches deployed. Validate that any necessary reboot(s) occurred and/or
that your endpoints dont require a reboot.

Practical Steps:
To confirm recent deployments in LRS:
Run the operational report Deployment Detail
Select the group(s) that you are monitoring
Review success/failure results (Patched and Complete %)

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18. Calculate Time to Deploy

Measure how long it takes to get all servers, desktops and laptops fully patched in your organization. This is
a great metric to measure against. Remain vigilant for laptops and VPN-connected systems that may connect days (or weeks) after the initial deployment.
Fully patched and time to deploy success metrics may be defined differently for different organizations depending on the mobility of the machines being managed, how often the machines are online, or the type of
machines under management, such as desktop or server.

Practical Steps:
To strategize and organize patch deployments to the appropriate endpoints and endpoint groups, use
LRS as follows:

Run the report Patch Tuesday Monitoring Report

Select the group(s) that you are monitoring
The report provides a summary of the patch status for a selected group of machines for the critical
patches released in the selected Patch Tuesday cycle.

Set the Auto Refresh parameter to monitor the progress of deployments on endpoints in near-real-time.

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19. Monitor for Compliance

Make certain that new or rebuilt systems are base-lined for their appropriate systems group. Monitor for
removal of patches. Create or update an existing mandatory baseline for future deployments.

Practical Steps:
Upon successful deployment of bulletin content, add bulletins to
mandatory baseline policies.

Go the Manage > Groups page

Select the Mandatory Baseline View
Click on the Manage button
Select bulletins to add to the mandatory baseline
Click on the Assign button

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20. Checks and Balances

Review the Effectiveness of Patch Tuesday Remediations report in LRS to validate the deployment.

Practical Steps:
To review the patch progress and effectiveness of deploying Patch Tuesday remediations and to
understand the security posture and vulnerability compliance of the enterprise for Patch Tuesday
patches released by Microsoft for the selected patch cycle, use LRS as follows:

Run the report Effectiveness of Patch Tuesday Remediations Report

Select the group(s) that you are monitoring
The report provides an executive overview of the Patch Tuesday deployment status while also allowing
drill-throughs to operational endpoint details.

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21. Metrics Improvement

Modify system settings, distribution parameters and so forth to further optimize the system for next months
updates. WAN optimization, polling frequency and minimizing the patches being detected can all help further
optimize performance. Look for computers that did not receive updates at all or those that took unusually
long to receive updates.

Practical Steps:
Go the Manage > Groups page
Identify any endpoints that are offline and/or have not been remediated.
Troubleshoot the endpoints to determine why endpoints were not updated and modify deployments
accordingly

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About Lumension Security, Inc.

Lumension Security, Inc., a global leader in endpoint management and security, develops, integrates and markets security
software solutions that help businesses protect their vital information and manage critical risk across network and endpoint
assets. Lumension enables more than 5,100 customers worldwide to achieve optimal security and IT success by delivering a
proven and award-winning solution portfolio that includes Vulnerability Management, Endpoint Protection, Data Protection,
Antivirus and Reporting and Compliance offerings. Lumension
is known for providing world-class customer support and services 24x7, 365 days a year. Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona,
Lumension has operations worldwide, including Texas, Florida,
Washington D.C., Ireland, Luxembourg, Singapore, the United
Kingdom, and Australia. Lumension: IT Secured. Success Optimized. More information can be found at www.lumension.com.

Lumension, Lumension Patch and Remediation, Lumension Vulnerability Management, IT Secured. Success Optimized., and the Lumension logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lumension Security, Inc. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Global Headquarters
8660 East Hartford Drive, Suite 300
Scottsdale, AZ 85255 USA
phone: +1.480.970.1025
fax: +1.480.970.6323

www.lumension.com
Vulnerability Management | Endpoint Protection | Data Protection | Compliance and IT Risk Management

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