Best Practice: Updating software patches and virus DAT files

Strategy in Practice

Rules for success

Things to avoid

Questions you must ask

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Last words

This Best Practices is part of a collection of advice provided by information technology professionals on how they have solved various challenges, and addressed IT priorities within their organizations.

Company:

Cape Cod Cooperative Bank

Cape Cod Cooperative Bank was founded in 1921 as a mutual community bank to serve the people of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It is an independent community-owned bank whose tradition and future is to provide unique, personal service in order to meet the ever-changing needs of its community.

Challenge:

The bank needed to ensure that software patches and virus DAT files were up-to-date on financial advisors' laptops as they connected to the bank's network. The laptops were not part of the bank's domain and could not be updated through group policy or other corporate patch management systems.

Solution:

The bank installed PredatorWatch's Auditor16 device at the five branches. The advisor's laptops are audited as soon as they receive a dynamic IP and the summarized results are emailed to the network administrator for further review, with the detailed report, or action if necessary.

How it worked:

A financial advisor connected his laptop to the network triggering an audit and subsequent email to the network administrator. The administrator logged into the Auditor16 and discovered a medium level vulnerability on the detailed report. He immediately notified the advisor and the appropriate software update was applied to the laptop.

Rules for success:

• Reporting - the branches remote location required a solution that could notify the appropriate personnel in a timely and informative fashion.
• Maintenance - with a limited staff the devices needed to be automatically updated, virtually maintenance free and easy to deploy.
• Effectiveness - the solution had to work reliably to ensure the integrity of the network.
• Price - the limited number of laptops and branches required a solution that was cost effective.

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