Patch Management Service
The exposure window is the business risk. Shrink it.
Structured patch lifecycle management — vulnerability tracking, testing, deployment, and verification.
Ensures timely remediation of security updates while minimizing operational disruption. We design a risk-based patch cadence, instrument it, and run the weekly ops so your exposure window shrinks quarter over quarter.
- Risk-based patch model
- Weekly ops review
- Deployment and verification records
- Executive scorecard
- Zero-day response runbook
- Measurably smaller exposure window quarter-over-quarter
- Zero-day response with 24-hour compensating controls
- Executive-ready patch compliance scorecard
- Auditor evidence for patch-management controls
How the engagement runs. Phase by phase.
Inventory reconciliation
CMDB + endpoint agent + network scan; reconcile to ground truth.
Risk model + SLAs
Asset-criticality tiering, patch-SLA policy by severity × tier.
Ring architecture + pipeline
Canary/early/broad/full rings, test-suite definition, rollback playbook.
First managed cycle
Run full monthly cycle with handholding: scan → score → deploy → verify.
Steady-state ops
Monthly cycle + zero-day response + quarterly tuning review.
Executive scorecard
Monthly metrics: exposure window, SLA adherence, exception count.
What we actually use. No secrets.
Every tool earns its place. We publish our stack so your team can audit, review, and integrate with what we bring.
- MIMicrosoft SCCM / IntuneEnterprise Windows patch orchestration and reporting
- RERed Hat Satellite / SUSE ManagerEnterprise Linux patch management with errata sync
- ANAnsible / Chef / PuppetConfig-as-code patch automation for mixed environments
- TA Tanium / BigFix / AutomoxReal-time endpoint state and patch enforcement
- QU Qualys / Rapid7 / TenablePre/post-patch vulnerability scanning for closure proof
- JAJamf / Intune for macOSApple fleet management and OS upgrade orchestration
- CUCustom Python dashboardsExposure-window metrics, SLA compliance, exec scorecards
- SEServiceNow / Jira CMDB integrationChange-management workflow integration for audit trail
How we do the work. Not just what.
Risk-based patch scoring
Priority = CVSS × exploitability (EPSS) × asset-criticality. A 9.8 on a dev laptop is not a 9.8 on your payment processor.
Ring deployment
4-tier rings: canary (IT) → early (volunteer dept) → broad → full. Bad patches caught by ring 1, never reach production.
Maintenance windows that work
We find your actual-safe windows from historical uptime data, not the one on the whiteboard.
Zero-day response playbook
When a KEV-listed vuln drops: 1) inventory exposure, 2) compensating control, 3) emergency patch, 4) verification scan. Each step has an owner and SLA.
Exception governance
Every can't-patch asset has an exception record with compensating control, expiry date, and executive owner. No silent exceptions.
Patch-testing pipeline
Critical patches run through a smoke-test suite before ring 1 — captures 80% of patch regressions pre-deploy.
Real problems. Real fixes.
Anonymized incidents from actual engagements: what broke, why it mattered, and how we fixed it.
Client's patch SLA was 30 days — in practice averaging 78 days, with no visibility why.
Cyber-insurance renewal flagged the exposure window as material risk.
Ring deployment + pipeline automation collapsed average critical to 5 days and everything-else to 21. Visibility dashboard showed each delay root cause (CAB, test fail, window miss) so managers could fix systemic issues, not chase tickets.
Log4Shell dropped on a Friday afternoon — client had no inventory of Java apps.
60 hours of engineering triage to find where log4j lived.
Post-incident we built an ongoing software-inventory pipeline (JAR/NPM/PyPI fingerprints pushed to a central store). For the next zero-day (spring4shell), inventory took 20 minutes. 90% time reduction per event.
Monthly Windows patch broke a legacy LOB app — IT rolled back, patch cycle stalled for 3 months.
SMB-v1 and other deprecated protocols remained exposed.
Added LOB-app smoke test to ring 0 and compatibility shim for KB3033929-style issues. Re-enabled monthly cycle within 2 weeks. LOB app scheduled for modernization with a dated retirement SLA.
Patch lifecycle
Scan → score → deploy in rings → verify → report.
Targets, not promises.
Will patches break our critical apps?
Can you handle zero-days?
What about servers we can't reboot easily?
Who owns what — you or us?
Scope a patch management service engagement.
30-minute scoping call. You'll talk to an operator, not a BDR.