Overview
Patch management is the process of identifying, testing, and installing system updates to fix bugs, address security vulnerabilities, and optimize the stability and speed of operating systems (OSes) and applications.
Patching—along with software updates and system reconfiguration—is an important part of IT system lifecycle management and vulnerability management. It’s critical for fixing vulnerabilities swiftly, before they can be exploited. On a small scale you can manage patches manually. But in a complex hybrid cloud environment, good security practices call for automated patching.
By automating patch management through a coordinated, unified process, you can close security gaps and maintain compliance across both Linux® and Microsoft Windows environments.
What are patches and patch management?
Patches are new or updated code—often defining configuration—that determines how an OS, platform, or application behaves. Patches are usually released as needed to fix mistakes in code, close vulnerabilities, improve the performance of existing features, or add new features to software. Patches are not newly compiled OSes, platforms, or applications. They’re always released as updates to existing software.
However, patch management is more than just the availability of these updates; it’s the strategic process of identifying, prioritizing, and verifying them. Effective management ensures that the right patches are applied to the right systems at the right time, preventing the "remedy" from inadvertently breaking critical business workflows or causing system instability.
IT system administrators use patch management as a tool against cyberattacks, security breaches, and malware—vulnerabilities caused by emerging threats, outdated or missing patches, and system misconfigurations. By managing your strategy in 1 place, organizations can track the compliance of their entire inventory. This ensures no single end point remains open to exploitation.
Operating systems automation with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Why manage patches?
Patching without a clearly defined patch management process can get messy.
Enterprise IT environments often contain hundreds of systems operated by large teams, requiring thousands of security patches, bug fixes, and configuration changes. Even with a scanning tool, manually sifting through data files to identify systems, updates, and patches is onerous.
Patch management tools help generate clear reports showing which systems, applications, and resources are patched, need patching, and are noncompliant.
Automating patch management
Implementing a vigilant patch management policy takes planning. But you can pair patch management solutions with automation software to make configuring and patching more accurate, reduce human error, and limit downtime. A modern approach to Linux patch management uses automation as a continuous monitoring loop. It keeps systems ready so they can stage and fix vulnerabilities as soon as they’re identified.
Automation can help IT teams spend a lot less time on repetitive tasks, like identifying security risks, testing systems, and deploying patches across thousands of end points. Reducing these time-consuming, manual processes frees up resources and helps teams prioritize more proactive projects.
Automated workflows also let you integrate critical pre- and postpatching tasks, such as creating snapshots, managing IT service management (ITSM) tickets, and generating infrastructure reports. In complex environments where interdependent servers support applications, automation is essential for orchestrating reboots in the right order. This keeps your services running and systems stable without requiring a technician’s manual intervention.
Patch management best practices
Unpatched and out-of-date systems can cause compliance issues and security risks. While security teams often identify these vulnerabilities early, the challenge lies in how long it takes to manually deploy a fix across the entire enterprise. To find and fix issues faster, you need a thorough identification process and a way to automate at scale.
Identify systems that are noncompliant, vulnerable, or unpatched. Scan systems daily.
Patch often, as patches are usually shipped at least monthly.
Prioritize patches based on the potential impact. Calculate risk, performance, and time considerations.
Test patches before placing them into production.
Patching strategy should also account for cloud and containerized resources, which are deployed from base images. Ensure base images comply with organization-wide security baselines. As with physical and virtualized systems, scan and patch base images regularly. When patching a base image, rebuild and redeploy all containers and cloud resources based on that image.
Patching for Linux and Microsoft Windows systems
Most organizations manage a mix of OSes and tool sets to manually patch. To further complicate matters, Linux and Windows administrators often work with different tools and terminology. This disconnect can introduce human error and delays critical security fixes.
Red Hat® Ansible® Automation Platform removes these barriers by letting you build a single, repeatable workflow that automates patch management for both Linux and Windows environments in 1 workstream.
By treating patches as code, you establish a unified pipeline that makes every automation execution predictable. Whether your servers are in an on-premise or cloud environment, Ansible Automation Platform lets you build workflows that automatically:
- Collect inventory of every managed server.
- Classify hosts by OS, environment, and maintenance window.
- Apply patches with built-in safety checks.
- Validate success by generating a compliance report.
Take control of patching across both Linux and Microsoft Windows systems using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Video duration: 3:21.
Why Red Hat?
Red Hat curates the expertise and tools necessary to turn patching from a reactive chore into an automated strategy.
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform delivers a scalable, enterprise-grade solution for consistent and repeatable patch management. It lets you automate the entire patch management lifecycle—from scanning for vulnerabilities to the final reboot—in a coordinated, unified way across both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows environments.
Ansible Content Collections
Using Ansible Content Collections, you can quickly develop consistent patching workflows for Linux and Windows systems across on-premise, cloud, and edge environments.
Ansible Playbooks
Ansible Playbooks are lists of tasks that automatically execute for your specified inventory or groups of hosts. With Ansible Playbooks, you can generate custom infrastructure reports and gather deep insights while executing patching at scale.
Event-Driven Ansible
Event-Driven Ansible provides event-handling capability to automate time-consuming tasks and respond to changing conditions. Combining Event-Driven Ansible with Red Hat Lightspeed (formerly Red Hat Insights) lets you address security issues before they become problems for your Red Hat ecosystem by automatically triggering patches as soon as vulnerabilities are reported. This eliminates the need for manual intervention. It also makes sure security rules are consistently applied, whether you’re patching 1 server or a complex, multitier application environment.
Learn Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform | Interactive labs
Learn how to use Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform at your own pace with these step-by-step Red Hat interactive labs.
