How to Maximize Your MSP Company’s Patching Protocols

As an MSP company, you need to be able to outshine competitors and onsite solutions clients put together themselves. More than 50% of data breaches could have been prevented with a patch. If you’re thinking critically, you’ll realize that a sizable portion of those breaches came from businesses using the services of an MSP. Accordingly, someone dropped the ball.
Maximizing Your MSP’s Patch Protocols
There are a few best practices you’re going to want to follow through on as a means of establishing the most effective patch management as an MSP. You might want to consider the following:
- Develop clear patch management protocols for employees and clients
- Cloud-app patch management solutions
- Dedicated patch management personnel
- Incorporating RMM options
Develop Clear Patch Management Protocols for Employees and Clients
An MSP company needs to have clearly defined protocols when it comes to patch management. Essentially, you’re expecting there to be new patches on a regular basis owing to the continuously shifting reality of the IT world.
Protocols should be put in place to continuously search for new patch management solutions and to quickly apply solutions when they become available. Such protocols need to define personnel action and you additionally need to appraise clients of patch benefits. Once they understand what’s at stake, you can keep them more secure.
Cloud-App Patch Management Solutions
Increasingly, the cloud has emerged as a tool in helping manage patch protocols. There are dedicated apps for the purpose, including Adobe, Citrix, Dropbox, Google, Skype, VMware, and more. All these offer patch solutions which can help your MSP stay ahead of the game.
Dedicated Patch Management Personnel
It’s also strategically valuable to hire people that have as a core focus the identification and application of new patches. You’ll need such an individual, or several of them, managing your own internal security anyway. You might as well extend that out to clientele.
Incorporating RMM Options
Remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools are a key component in today’s modern IT environment. It turns out that people are more likely to access the internet through a mobile device today than through some desktop user portal. The cloud is one of the reasons for decentralization, so is increased technological capability.
Many businesses today don’t have employees operating at a central location; they’re using BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) or Device as a Service (DaaS). Well, you save money through such paradigms. However, if you’re not careful to secure remote devices, they can infect a given network.
Thankfully, RMM solutions are ideal for swift patch application. You can remotely update all devices on the network with the click of a mouse from your primary location. Problem solved. If your MSP doesn’t provide RMM solutions for clients or use them internally, this is a considerable thing to do.
More Effective Patch Management
As an MSP company, you want to incorporate patch management protocols that keep you on the cutting edge of security solutions. RMM, dedicated patch management personnel, cloud solutions, and the development of clear protocols both internally and externally represent excellent tactics in facilitating reliable patch management.