Software updates, especially Windows OS updates, are a necessary evil that can be disruptive and annoying. But they are important to maintain the security and functionality of our workstations, so we do our best to deploy and monitor these updates in such a way as to minimise the impact to your employees.
Pain-free Updates
Windows updates - the sworn nemesis of many a frustrated worker (and home user) throughout the western world.
Of course, we know that updates are important – but why are updates forced upon us at the most inconvenient of times? Why do updates install so slowly, while we tear our hair out waiting (and waiting) for the PC to reload so we can get back to what we were doing?
We hear you!
A frustrated employee quickly becomes a disheartened employee, which is exactly why we manage Windows updates in such a way as to minimise disruption to the working day, keeping staff on track, empowered to work without fear of rude interruption.
MANAGED DELIVERY OF WINDOWS UPDATES AND BEYOND
In addition to working with our clients to identify the optimal time(s) for updates to commence, we take a precautionary approach to rolling out major updates to your entire suite of workstations.
Typically, we will identify a small pool of non-critical workstations (usually running slightly different builds, as a control) within your business, to pilot the latest major updates. By applying updates to a small test-bed in this manner, we can proactively monitor if the updates negatively affect those workstations or any of the software running upon them, over a period of days.
On those rare occasions where our central management system fails to pick up an issue caused by an update to the pilot group, we’ll quickly and reactively resolve issues as reported to us by the pilot users.
Once confident that there are no major issues with an update package, we’ll then schedule delivery of the update via our user-agent (installed on all workstations on your network) for an agreed convenient time, whilst ensuring users are notified to leave their workstations turned on that evening or weekend.
There are exceptions to the process, particularly where Microsoft (or another vendor) urges expediency due to major vulnerabilities that leave your systems at severe risk until patches are applied.
Additionally, we’ll apply a similar process and procedure to your third-party vendor software, including many line-of-business software packages.
Thanks to our extensive knowledge base and systems, we are able to keep abreast of recommended updates, both major and minor, for the entire suite of applications used throughout your enterprise systems. You can rest assured that if a particular software vendor identifies a known security vulnerability or bug, our systems will:
- Pick this up as part of an automated workflow
- Match the software instance to your business, if you run the affected application
- Identify individual desktop machines on your network potentially affected and...
- Schedule remedial action accordingly, either on an ASAP basis or staggered rollout (depending on the exact nature of the vulnerability and update to be applied).
TAKING THE RESPONSIBILITY AWAY FROM YOUR WORKFORCE
It’s not uncommon (in fact, it’s scarily commonplace) for us to discover (via our comprehensive audits) that a proportion of users have simply disabled all updates on their machine, effectively putting the entire company network at risk.
As unwise as this is, it demonstrates just how much of an annoyance Windows updates can be to end users.
This is something we can easily resolve once your business workstations are brought under our centralised management system, through enforcement of organisational policy.
The end user no longer needs to worry about any of their desktop updates or security: we take care of delivery and the end user can no longer ‘opt out’ of updates, unless by prior arrangement with appropriate authorisation (in exceptional circumstances).
More often than not, the end user doesn’t even register that updates have occurred, which after all is how it should be, enabling your staff to focus on their jobs rather than worrying about technology.