Survey: Lack of Automated Patch Management Is a Key Security Risk for Remote IT Operations

73% of respondents lack automated patch management, and 62% experienced incidents involving exploitation of a vulnerability for which a patch was available but had not yet been deployed.

Action1 Corporation, a cloud-based remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution provider, today released its 2021 Remote IT Management Challenges Report. Based on the feedback from 491 IT professionals worldwide, the study explores how organizations patch and manage their remote and office-based endpoints and provide employees with remote IT support.

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The report reveals that even though most organizations plan to keep at least some remote work in 2022, they struggle to secure and support their remote or hybrid workforce. 78% of respondents admitted experiencing delays in patching critical vulnerabilities during the past year, and 62% suffered security incidents involving a known vulnerability that had not been mitigated even though a patch was available. Indeed, most organizations lack robust patch management: 14% manage all patches manually and 59% automate OS patching only.

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Other findings of the survey include:

1. Patching takes 2.5 longer when endpoints are remote.
2. The top barrier to effective patch management (cited by 38% of respondents) is the inability to manage updates in one place and prioritize them effectively.
3. 77% of organizations experienced security incidents during the past year; the most common causes were malware (41%) and phishing (31%) attacks.
4. 35% of organizations are unable to spot unwanted software on their remote endpoints.
5. Resolving IT support requests takes twice as long when employees are remote.

“Modern organizations use more applications than ever, and all of them can have vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit,” said Mike Walters, President and co-founder of Action1. “With vendors issuing updates at a rapid rate, it is essential to automate patching for both OS and third-party software.”

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