RMM vs. Dedicated Patch Management Solution: Which Patching Strategy Is the Best Option for You?
As attacks grow increasingly unpredictable and complex, cybersecurity defense requires much more than a basic strategy; it demands a proactive approach that anticipates the adversary's every move. Many MSPs entrusted with this critical mission by customers must equip themselves with the right technologies that prevent, detect, and respond to potential attacks and adapt as environments and organizational needs change.
Continuous patch life cycle management is critical to this proactive approach, as it helps lessen an organization's security vulnerabilities. MSPs have several options for managing software updates and patches in their customers' systems: they can either use remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools or deploy specific patch management solutions. Both solutions allow users to monitor systems proactively and minimize vulnerabilities by anticipating potential threats.
But how do you decide which is the best option to maximize security and efficiency for your operations?
Patch Management with RMM
RMM enables MSPs to monitor, manage, and troubleshoot devices and networks remotely from a centralized console. This tool facilitates monitoring, administration, and patching tasks in a single environment, providing a convenient solution that manages all network devices. Most RMM solutions also include some limited automation functionality for scheduling specific patches, which is helpful for basic patching applications. However, while valuable in terms of providing a centralized view and remotely controlling devices and systems, patching functionalities may prove insufficient in more complex scenarios due to the following limitations and challenges:
- Basic patch management functionalities: Many RMM tools offer only standard patching options and lack advanced features that a dedicated patch management tool would include, such as advanced patch prioritization, custom scheduling, or automated verification of each patch's effectiveness.
- Limitations in Critical Security Cases: Some RMMs incorporate essential security functions. However, their primary focus is system administration, limiting their ability to assess and detect risks in-depth and prioritize patches according to criticality. In the event of a cyberattack, the fact that they are not integrated with a security tool causes limitations such as the lack of a unified view, which complicates real-time containment and remediation, increasing the risk of propagation.Without integrated visibility, it is hard to identify vulnerable devices quickly in such scenarios, which hampers an effective response to active threats.
- Less control and limited automation: Although RMMs allow for some automation, control over patch deployment is often limited. These solutions often focus on a specific set of software, lacking capabilities to automatically identify and install patches for different operating systems and software or conduct tests in controlled environments before implementation, which can lead to conflicts or errors after a patch is applied.
- Limited coverage of third-party applications: Many RMMs only offer support for standard applications, which restricts their ability to handle third-party software application patches. This can be a problem in organizations with a wide variety of software installed.
- Difficulty complying with regulations: In regulated industries, companies must ensure high security and patch management documentation. RMMs may not provide the level of detail needed to comply with regulations such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, or GDPR.
Dedicated patch management tool
Compared to a direct patching approach using RMMs, a dedicated patch management tool offers significant improvements in several key areas:
- Advanced automation and centralized monitoring: These tools automate the detection of vulnerabilities in systems, prioritizing and defining the frequency of patch installation tasks and critical updates, ensuring efficient security management, and reducing dependency on manual processes. They also provide a single dashboard to monitor the security status of all devices. This provides full visibility into known vulnerabilities, pending patches, and unsupported or EOL software, which enables an agile response.
- Comprehensive threat containment and response: Dedicated patching tools, commonly available as endpoint security add-on modules, are designed to address critical vulnerabilities directly and specifically. Integration with an endpoint security solution allows for a combination of immediate patching and management, with coordinated containment and remediation actions on vulnerable machines, ensuring an uninterrupted response. Centralized visibility into vulnerabilities and security events enables you to act quickly and accurately, identifying and isolating at-risk machines, and interrupting communications while preventing the attack from spreading and addressing the threat.
- Broad Coverage for Third-Party Applications: This covers a variety of applications, including third-party and custom software, ensuring comprehensive protection against potential breaches across the infrastructure.
- Regulatory Compliance Support: Dedicated patch management tools offer advanced functionalities that enable efficient patch management to be maintained. In addition, they provide valuable information such as patch and device inventory, activity tracking, and insight into current patching status, helping to comply with regulatory standards such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, or GDPR, which require rigorous management and updating processes.
- Cost reduction and operational simplicity: these tools integrate into existing infrastructure without the need for additional agents, and enable remote updates from a Cloud console, minimizing the operational burden.
WatchGuard Patch Management is a prime example of an advanced solution that provides MSPs with effective and in-depth control over software vulnerabilities. Both tools – RMM and patch management – are critical in managing and securing enterprise infrastructures. However, a dedicated patch management solution maximizes security by enabling full control over system protection, with the efficiency to match customer demands. The advanced capabilities of WatchGuard Patch Management together with WatchGuard EPDR allow MSPs to combine the best of both solutions and provide more comprehensive and effective protection to customers.
If you're a service provider or MSP looking for ways to optimize your security operations, adopting a strategic approach to patch management could be a game-changer. Implementing a managed Patch Management service not only boosts operational efficiency but also strengthens your security solution portfolio.
To dive deeper into this topic and learn how to integrate these practices into your service offerings, we invite you to check out our partner brief and explore the related article on our blog.
