RE: Deploying Microsoft patches

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To: "'Su Wadlow'" <swadlow@utdallas.edu>, <security-basics@securityfocus.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 20:51:34 -0400

The down side to SUS is it only does critical updates, and doesn't do
service packs.

I personally use Patchlink (www.patchlink.com) - which has always rated
one of the best (most times the best). It costs a little to initially
get it setup, but maintenance is as low as $15 a windows machine - per
year. Add that to a ~$1200 console (paid once) and your golden.
Patchlink is also what I consider an enterprise solution, as it handles
Windows platforms and software, Unix (a number of commercial flavors -
including RedHat Linux), it also does Netware. With this price, you
also get email notification of all patches that come out on these
platforms (down to media player patches). It also comes with additional
abilities that allow you to deploy other software (Adobe Acrobat Reader,
WinZip, ....) You can also add your own packages. I just created one
that scheduled defrags on my windows 2000 servers (SUS certainly can't
do that).

When you are talking about an enterprise solution, you can't beat this.
If you are talking about a small shop that can't afford a little money
($1500 gets the console and 17 Windows clients for the first year, $250
covers you for the next year), then SUS might be a good solution.

Another option if you are in a small environment is HFNETCHKLT
(http://www.slavlik.com) is free for the first 50 clients you use it on.
There is no time limit on this product, and it is free to use. Though
it is much better then SUS, it still doesn't compare to PatchLink
(IMHO).

Good luck.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Su Wadlow [mailto:swadlow@utdallas.edu]
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 2:28 PM
To: security-basics@securityfocus.com
Subject: Re: Deploying Microsoft patches

--On Friday, July 11, 2003 2:47 AM -0700 Ronish Mehta
<sf_mail_sbm@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Currently we are deploying patches manually, and this
> is very time consuming, and we are not able to keep
> uptodate with the latest patches being released by
> Microsoft
>
> Anyone who has an automated process for deploying

Microsoft Software Update Services.

<http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/windowsupdate/sus/default.asp>

Basically a company-internal version of Windows Update. Note that you
can't use it to apply service packs; but it's *great* for applying other
patches. And it's one product that you don't have to pay MS for. :-)

We've been using it for patch deployment for over a year now, and it
works great. Takes all the manual labor out of keeping our systems up
to date.

-- 
Su
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