Re: Windows Patch Management

["Bowden, Zeb" <zbowden () VT EDU>]

We're using WSUS to distribute and approve the updates for our servers
and have found this saves quite a bit of time. It's also pretty flexible
and has decent reporting for patch status and verification.

Is it the actual patching that's taking so much time and driving your
admins crazy or is it the preparation for the patching (backups,
testing, verification, etc)?

Zeb Bowden
zbowden () vt edu



-----Original Message-----
From: Rose, Ryan [mailto:Ryan.Rose () UNCO EDU] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2006 5:12 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: [SECURITY] Windows Patch Management

Greetings,
 
I'm curious how other institutions are conducting Windows Server Patch
Management.  Currently we are testing the patches in our test
environment for the week following the release date.  We then roll-out
the updates to all productions servers over the following weekend within
our maintenance windows.  This takes an amazing amount of time, we
believe it is best to stick to a monthly schedule but our sys admins are
going crazy.  Any suggestions or thoughts around this issue.
 
Thanks in advance,
 
Ryan