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Article from ADMIN 52/2019

By Ken Hess

We want to be secure. We don't like security. We want system administrators, but yet we are irritated when they need to fix something or to implement security. Complicated isn't it?

For those of you who have awesome tools at your disposal for patch management, such as a unified endpoint management (UEM) suite like SCCM, you can skip ahead to the technical articles and ignore my observations on this somewhat touchy subject. You have achieved System Administration Nirvana. Congratulations. The rest of us have to deal with Patch Tuesdays, hardware updates, firmware updates, this obscure patch, and that rare update on what seems like a daily basis. It's no fun is it? But who ever said system administration was fun? Well no one told me it was fun, but no one ever said it wasn't either. I resigned myself, long ago in fact, to the reality that system administration is neither fun nor life enriching. Then again, I'm not sure it's supposed to be; the plain fact is that the job of system administration is complicated, at best.

Open a fresh can of your favorite beverage and follow along. Trust me, the next 500-ish words will change your life forever (slight exaggeration).

I think that we can all agree that patch management is directly linked to security. Patches and security are just a thing – a thing that drives me crazy. Believe me, after 20 plus years of system administration, that drive gets shorter and shorter with each passing month. What irritates me more than that one guy who always mentions security in a meeting that's about to end is those people who want to circumvent security because it's inconvenient. Yes, inconvenient. Well, I know this sounds crazy, but dealing with security is inconvenient for everyone, not just you.

I don't know anyone who loves rebooting after downloading and installing patches. I don't know anyone who loves working through that second factor when logging in to a server. And I certainly don't know anyone who loves

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