[LINK] McAfee update problem

[Stilgherrian]

On 24/04/2010, at 10:08 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:
> What "labs"?

Any halfway decent enterprise (in the sense of "very large business") will, or at least should, already have a test environment for doing QA on its own internal applications before rolling out changes throughout the organisation. The "lab" may be nothing more than a PC or two set up with the organisation's standard operating environment and a list of quick tests to do.

If they don't have such an environment, their shareholders should be asking some very pointed questions.


> I can understand that approach. However, isn't the point of automatic 
> updates using a product like McAfee (or any other) the idea that they 
> just "happen"? Since we don't know when an update is going to occur 
> (generally speaking), how does an enterprise do this efficiently? Do 
> they have one machine that is on automatic with the others set for 24 
> hour delay to download updates from a local server? And what if it's 
> over a weekend?
> 
> I can see this being v-messy.

Things are only messy if they're not organised properly. :)

This isn't a new problem, not at all. Organisations should already have patch management processes for all their other software.

It doesn't matter when the update becomes available. It's more about when you choose to install those updates on your systems, taking into account you organisation's operational needs. This doesn't have to be rushed. At the enterprise level, desktop anti-virus won't be the only line of defence. The risk of screwing up things by installing an untested patch often outweigh the rick of not being protected from that day's new treats.

I imagine there'll be quite a few CIOs looking into these very issues right now. Well, maybe not RIGHT now...

I know of at least one organisation with several thousand desktops where the users' computers all re-load the SOE dick image every night. No matter what problems might have been seen the day before, they start the day with a clean computer. In that environment, even if the patch did make it into the SOE image, you just roll back to the previous day's.

Stil


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