Chapter 4 Patch Management Overview

Patch management is a process used to ensure that the appropriate patches are installed on a system. Patch management is becoming increasingly important for users of all types of systems, from desktop systems to mission-critical servers.

Industry experience has shown that failures in patch management can lead to financial loss, loss of data, exploitation of security vulnerabilities, and other negative consequences. Problems such as these can damage an organization's reputation, and can even result in legal consequences. Because of this, many organizations are finding that having a robust patch management process in place is no longer optional. Additionally, many of these organizations require their overall patching strategy to include a proactive patching component similar to the one presented in this chapter.

Although patch management should be a topic of concern to all users, a robust patch management strategy is especially important if the environment includes any of the following:

This chapter presents some basic patch management strategies and concepts. Some of the concepts are general in nature, whereas others are specific to patching HP-UX systems.