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Security Patch Management

Client Sector

Outsourcing

The Challenge

The challenge was to reduce the amount of duplication of effort and automate/simplify Patch Management. This would enable the business to conform responsively to security compliance whilst reducing the total costs incurred, benefiting both our Client and their customers.

This would have to be achieved based on the following points:-

• Centrally Managed Process and Procedure, integrated with existing business procedures.
• End to End Patch Management for multiple customers managed by a central process to reduce duplication.
• Utilisation of Tivoli and the existing infrastructure.
• Enable process to be operated by centralised help desks with ease and no requirement for advanced tool specific skills.

The Solution

After analysing the existing methods for security patching and realising the areas for improvement the solution was created.

Using the Tivoli suite of products, a process, procedure and interface were put in place to facilitate the end to end Patch Management of multiple Operating systems. Ensuring that multiple customer environments across multiple heterogeneous networks were catered for while integrating with internal process and procedures where required.

Using IBM WebSphere and the Tivoli Configuration Management products a WEB interface was created to enable Patch Management to be managed by the relevant Operating System Owners. With this approach the owners of the Operating Systems could control the security patching without having to be Systems Management experts. With the facility to schedule patching and or pass the task to out of hours support, Patch Management is made less taxing.

With a wealth of reporting available the Service Management teams could identify at the click of a button what risk the customer environments were at and their level of conformance to security patching policies.

Products Used

• IBM Tivoli Framework 4.1.1
• IBM Tivoli Configuration Manager 4.2.1 – 4.2.3
• IBM WebSphere with IBM HTTP Server

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