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Keep your software humming along with Avast Business Patch Management

Keep your software humming along with Avast Business Patch Management
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Disclosure: Our team is always looking for things we think our readers will value. We have received compensation for publishing this article.

Software patches are a bit like the annoying little brother of the IT world. 

These updates that can enhance efficiency, repair security vulnerabilities and deliver new features, seem to pop up sometimes on a daily basis, asking IT professionals to interrupt the smooth flow of their networks to deploy the fixes, which can sometimes take hours. In fact, deploying patches is such a constant and unrewarding task that in a recent survey conducted by cybersecurity firm Avast, out of 500,000 devices analyzed, only 304 were fully patched.

Wanting to address this glaring problem and help businesses keep their IT products 100 percent up-to-date, Avast has now released Business Patch Management, a program that can be added to any of the company’s anti-virus products. The solution works in the background to monitor the software on all devices on a network to discover and deploy patches automatically, saving a significant amount of administrative time.

Centralized Dashboard

To make the patch process as painless as possible, Avast has built this new software right into its existing dashboard for its antivirus products, known as the Management Console. Here, IT professionals can see at a glance where patches are needed and what the severity level of the patch is, along with the name of the patch, release notes and the release dates.

Working in the Console, users can also choose when to scan their systems for patch requirements. Scans can happen daily, weekly or monthly and can be run at any time of the day, and are downloaded to a master agent that then distributes the patches across the network. 

Furthermore, it’s possible to schedule automatic patch rollouts, which can be deployed at low-usage times, such as overnight. Applications that should be excluded from patches can also be designated and, the Console will provide automatic alerts if certain patches failed to install, so that they can be redeployed.

Flexible and comprehensive

One of the standout features of Avast Business Patch Management is that users can set the automatic system to scan and install all patches or to activate only when patches reach a certain level of severity. It’s also possible to block scans by vendor or product. 

And, speaking of products, the program not only scans the Windows operating system for needed patches, but it also analyzes thousands of other applications including widely used programs like Chrome, Firefox, Skype and Adobe Acrobat as well as lesser-known software like Blue Jeans and KeePass. Products from one hundred vendors in all are covered.

Avast Business Patch Management also features robust reporting features, so that you can easily customize the kind of data your business operations require, export that data to a PDF and print it for sharing with team members and management. Along with automatic patch update alerts and a simple sorting feature, the program truly is an incredible assistant for IT pros. 

Avast Business Patch Management is available for a free 30-day trial, and can then be purchased for $29.99 per device per year. While it is currently only available for all Windows operating systems including Windows Server, the company is working on a version for iOS, which it expects to release later this year.

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