Are all of your apps and OS’s up to date? Are you sure? How can you tell? And why patch? Allow me to elaborate:
An American Dental Association study in 2008 found that if you don’t brush your teeth you COULD DIE. The ADA recommends brushing your teeth twice a day for four minutes each time.
What the heck does that have to do with anything? Stick around…
According to Ponemon, nearly half of all companies they surveyed had suffered a breach. 57% of those companies were breached due to an unpatched vulnerability. A third of those companies knew they were vulnerable before the breach. They also found out that the average company spends 321 labor hours a week managing their vulnerability response process.
How’s that compare to spending four minutes, twice a day brushing your teeth? Starting to see the connection there?
In 2017, the WannaCry ransomware outbreak affected over 200,000 machines in 150 countries over a single weekend. The ransomware was developed using NSA tools built to exploit Windows vulnerabilities. What if I told you that Microsoft had released a patch for this vulnerability over a month before WannaCry hit?
Speaking of Microsoft, our good friends at TripWire tell us that in 201, Microsoft alone issued 2804 patches. That’s roughly 56 patches every Tuesday - and that’s just for Windows OS & applications. Noodle on those numbers a bit.
What if you had a way to keep your network clean and up to date by doing something as simple and boring as keeping your Operating Systems and applications up to date? In this week’s episode of the InSecurity Podcast, Matt Stephenson speaks with Automox CEO Jay Prassl about the role that patching plays in every business’s cybersecurity hygiene.
Jay founded Automox based on one simple maxim: Patch Your $#!%. Take a walk with Jay Prassl and see what you think…
About Jay Prassl
Jay Prassl (@jprassl) is the Founder and CEO of Automox. Jay founded Automox founded to pursue a vision: the complete automation of endpoint configuration, patching, management and inventory. Prior to Automox, Jay led the marketing efforts at SolidFire. Before that, he was employee number five at LeftHand Networks, where he spent 10 years breaking new ground in the storage market with the company's distributed SAN solution. He led multiple parts of the LeftHand business through its acquisition by HP.
Somehow, when not saving the world through his pursuit of cyber hygiene, Jay finds time to bike, swim and surf. Some of these hobbies are required by state law in order to live in Boulder, Colorado.
About Automox
Automox was founded to pursue a disruptive new vision: the complete automation of endpoint configuration, patching, management and inventory. They are the only cloud endpoint management solution capable of remediating Windows, OS X, and Linux endpoints from a single platform.
Automox's Dynamic Policy Engine allows IT managers to customize and group policies that ensure that every endpoint and software, regardless of location, meets regulatory and operational security requirements.
About Matt Stephenson
Insecurity Podcast host Matt Stephenson (@packmatt73) leads the Security Technology team at Cylance, which puts him in front of crowds, cameras, and microphones all over the world. He is the regular host of the InSecurity podcast and host of CylanceTV
Twenty years of work with the world’s largest security, storage, and recovery companies has introduced Stephenson to some of the most fascinating people in the industry. He wants to get those stories told so that others can learn from what has come before.
