Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

It is safe to say that anyone responsible for patch management will have had their fair share of issues with Windows Feature Updates over the years. These updates have amounted to new operating systems versions being released up to twice a year, and needless to say, could be huge in size—ranging anywhere from 3GB to 6GB. This resulted in not only long download times, but also lengthy install times—anywhere from one to two hours—that required multiple reboots to complete.

“If you are a managed service provider (MSP) in Switzerland, your customers are very likely Swiss customers, so they speak the local language, and they want their data to be in Switzerland, and they want your service provider to comply with all the Swiss regulations. And the same is true in 190 other countries, especially after last year,”

As the cyberthreat landscape is getting more sophisticated, the need for skilled cybersecurity professionals is also rising. The recent 2022 (ISC)2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study revealed that, in the past year, the cybersecurity workforce gap (the difference between the number of security professionals required and the number of suitably qualified people in the marketplace) has grown more than twice as much as the number of actual cybersecurity workforce hired, with a 26.2% year-on-year increase.

This is the second in a four-part series focusing on the findings from our 2023 annual Field Report for IT Management. We surveyed 4500 IT professionals from internal IT teams and MSPs across North America to gauge where their organizations are heading from a network management perspective. In part two, we’ll discuss the confidence IT pros have in their networks and how they can use automation to do more with less. You can read the full 2023 field report and compare your own IT statistics here.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, it was reported that cybercrime increased by 600%. As the world has become more reliant on technology, whether for personal life or for business, cyberattacks have risen with it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of cybersecurity misconceptions that prevent businesses from adequately preparing for and responding to these attacks. More time and resources need to be spent protecting this critical information.

Let’s be honest. Patching is tedious work. In a recent patching study by Ponemon and ServiceNow, it was revealed that 65% of businesses say that it is difficult to prioritize patches. Even after applying a patch, the patch management process doesn’t end there. Sometimes, new patches create more problems than they fix. This step-by-step guide prepares for such situations and explains how to uninstall a problematic patch.

Network management is the ongoing monitoring, administration, and maintenance of any networked system of computers. That said, networks have grown beyond the desktop computer, now encompassing all manner of end devices — mobile devices, laptops, printers — and the hardware that facilitates their interaction.

Last month, I introduced a new blog series for 2023 that aims to focus on how we can do a better job of making our New Year resolutions stick. Why do so many resolutions fail? Because we attempt to do too much, too quickly. We place too much pressure on ourselves to change EVERYTHING we don’t like, which can then become overwhelming to manage and keep up with.