Hackers take advantage of any weakness they can find. Often this is people using or reusing weak passwords and a lack of multifactor authentication (MFA) to verify log-ins. However, unpatched third-party applications are another way bad actors gain access to your systems, and once they’re inside, no firewall can protect you.
Ensuring every endpoint on your network is up-to-date can be time-consuming, especially when you’re doing it at scale. But failing to patch third-party apps leaves your company at risk. Beyond losing data or having personal information exposed, data breaches cost your company time and money and damage your reputation.
What Are Third-Party Applications?
Third-party applications are the “extras” you install on devices that aren’t made by the company that built the device or the operating system that fills a specific need for your business. For example, you may install QuickBooks to help the accounting or finance teams accomplish their tasks.
QuickBooks is an Intuit product, meaning Microsoft doesn’t maintain or update it. When you update your device with a Window’s-specific update, you’re updating your operating systems and native functions. Microsoft doesn’t maintain or update Quickbooks, though. It’s up to the user to stay informed about when updates are available and to install them.
That’s where things can get messy. Ensuring patch compliance on every device is often a manual process that relies on the end user to install third-party patches regularly.
For example, Microsoft has a free, built-in patch manager, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), which notifies users when Windows patches and updates are available. However, it won’t notify users that third-party patches, like those for QuickBooks, are available. Without a way to confirm someone downloaded and installed the QuickBooks update, your company could have endpoints that are vulnerable to attack.
Enabling automatic updates can help, but not every application has an auto-update option. And while deploying patches to company endpoints quickly is crucial to network security, it’s just as important to ensure they are compatible with your security policies.
What Is Third-Party Patch Management?
Third-party patch management is an organized approach to ensuring that every endpoint on your network that needs the patch receives it as quickly as possible. It allows IT to test the update for compatibility with your configuration and come up with a workaround before patch deployment. Third-party patch management also helps your company track which devices are up to date and update those that aren’t.
Manual third-party patch management is often time-consuming. Keeping up with critical patches is difficult, which can lead to less critical patches being overlooked and possibly not deployed. An automated third-party patch management solution ensures no endpoint is left behind. You can schedule the patch deployment to coincide with company downtime so no one has to wait for their device to update during the work day. If patching installation fails, the system can roll back updates, removing the need for manual intervention by staff.
How Third-Party Patch Management Protects Your Business
Failing to keep any third-party app up-to-date leaves that device vulnerable to attack. Third-party patch management plays a critical role in securing company endpoints, protecting the company’s reputation, and improving the bottom line.
Minimizes Attack Surface
Unpatched third-party applications are a weak link in your security, making them a common attack vector. Sophos’s The State of Ransomware 2024 report states that of the 5,000 companies surveyed, 59% experienced a ransomware attack in the last year. While 99% of these companies could identify the root cause of the attack, exploited vulnerabilities were the most common method (32%) hackers used to access the system.
Reducing your attack surface by deploying critical patches to third-party applications as soon as possible keeps your endpoints and network secure.
Enhances Compliance
Government and industry standards require your company to keep personally identifying information (PII) like social security numbers, emails, and home addresses secure and with good reason. PII is a juicy target and is the most common thing stolen in a breach.
A robust third-party patch management system ensures your company complies with data security regulations and is doing all it can to keep PII safe.
Increases Productivity
IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report found that data breaches impact the ability to do business. Nearly 70% of businesses surveyed said they experienced a significant or very significant business disruption because they were hacked. While your team may be able to get your systems back up and running quickly, the path to true recovery is long. Only 12% of companies said they had fully recovered from a data breach in the last year.
Even if hackers never breach your network, deploying an untested patch for a third-party app can cause unexpected issues, potentially disrupting your business.
While third-party patching is critical, deploying updates in the middle of the day may mean employees can’t do their jobs while their device is downloading, applying, and rebooting. And if the patch is incompatible with your system, rolling it back also takes time out of an otherwise productive day.
When you utilize patch management tools, IT can test patches before they’re deployed and schedule when updates happen, ensuring people have their device available when they need it most.
Saves Money
According to IBM, the global average cost of a data breach is $4.88 million — up over 10% from 2022 to 2023, which includes paying fines and compensatory damage to customers:
- A patch for the third-party application that contributed to the 2017 Equifax breach was released months before the hack happened. Internal processes failed to ensure the patch was deployed, costing Equifax at least $1.7 billion since then.
- The Wannacry attack of 2017 exploited an unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft’s operating systems. Not deploying the patch in time cost the National Health Service 92 million pounds.
- Marriott was hacked due to existing security vulnerabilities that were never patched after the company purchased Starwood in 2016. Marriot spent $30 million recovering and was fined $120 million by the UK.
Third-party application patching reduces the odds your company experiences a breach and spends millions recovering.
Proactive Not Reactive
An automated third-party patch management solution helps your team get ahead of problems. It can mitigate supply chain attacks and reduce the odds an unpatched endpoint is exploited.
Retains Customers
Breaches caused by unpatched third-party applications also damage your company’s reputation.
It can shake your customer’s faith in your ability to protect their data. If you suffer a data breach due to an unpatched third-party application, they may wonder what else is being overlooked.
Even when customers understand that data is always at risk of a breach, they may be concerned about the safety of their data, which could lead to customer churn. The cost of cleaning up a breach and hardening your systems can be significant. You may be forced to raise prices, which could prompt customers to look at alternatives.
Automated third-party patching keeps costs down and reassures your customers that you can keep their data safe.
Proactive Patching to Secure the Network
Third-party application patching is a critical step in securing your network. Failing to keep endpoints up-to-date leaves them open to evolving threats. A third-party patch management strategy protects your systems, and an automated third-party patch management system makes it easy to protect your endpoints.
Adaptiva’s OneSite Patch allows IT teams to automate and schedule third-party patching, eliminating tedious manual processes and without hogging precious bandwidth. Flexible, real-time control gives you the ability to block unstable patches and roll back any deployment in real-time. Request a demo today and learn how OneSite Patch can help you manage patches for third-party applications at scale.
