Minimizing Patch Management in crisis situations - Call from Digital Service User Associations to major providers

Since the generalisation of containment measures in Europe and throughout the world to combat the spread of COVID-19, companies and public organisations have organised in a few days the implementation of teleworking by employees and external service providers, on an unprecedented scale in terms of volume of users, speed of deployment and expected duration.

We would first of all like to compliment the providers of software, digital services and infrastructures on the impressive efforts they have shown in scaling up over the past weeks. We hope we can all continue to rely on them and their products and services in these difficult circumstances.

As many of the crucial functions of the ICT Departments must also now be monitored from remote locations, some of our members have alerted us about their difficulty in managing the patching of software and IT solutions in crisis context, and more particularly in situations of widespread homeoffices.

That is why our associations call, on behalf of their member organisations, on all suppliers concerned to take measures in favour of the temporary reduction of patching:
• reduction in the size of patches,
• limitation to essential security updates and vulnerability patches,
• suspension of updates and patches for non-essential functional improvements,
• development of a patching management system directly on the workstations of employees connected to the company's information system via the Internet.

According to our sources, Microsoft is working in this direction. We call on other software publishers and cloud providers to do the same.

Download the press release here.

Beltug
Cigref
CIO Platform Nederland