Patching in Cloud-Hosted Software

Ever since it started to be looked on as a reliable computing option for businesses, cloud computing has been exceedingly popular. Businesses and individuals use cloud computing platforms for their infrastructure needs, their application deployment, their file sharing and storage, and for redundancy to protect their business, but have you ever wondered how the cloud platforms themselves are kept up to date? Today, we will look into it. 

How Patches Benefit from the Cloud

Every piece of software needs regular updates to keep from becoming a vulnerability. The threat landscape is filled with entities looking to take advantage of unpatched software vulnerabilities. Software developers, increasingly cognizant of the threats that are often exposed in older code, now try to mitigate threats by issuing patches to strategically protect their software, and its users from the detrimental circumstances found when software isn’t supported properly. 

This problem is exacerbated when you look at just how many computers some organizations use; and, all the different software used on them. Having a plan in place to patch every piece of software on every machine when patches are made available is a heavily resource-intensive task. With this much pressure, there are frequent lapses in organization patch deployments, leaving holes in business computing infrastructure.

This overwhelming (and costly) problem is where the cloud comes in. By building a cloud-based strategy to deploy patches to multiple machines, it effectively reduces the work necessary to keep all of your critical systems patched and updated. 

How the Cloud Benefits from Patches

A business’ cloud-hosted software has to be supported in the same fashion as your onsite software systems. That’s why it is important to comprehensively vet your cloud service providers. Looking at other people’s experience with similar workloads will also be beneficial. You will want to ensure that whomever is managing your company’s IT, that they understand the threats behind improper software patching practices. 

At SCW we provide comprehensive IT support and services for any range of business needs. Call us today at (509) 534-1530 to talk more about protecting your software systems and your network.