Denver IT Consulting — Issues with Microsoft Patching

NOYNIM Denver IT Consulting has noticed several big issues with Microsoft

patches the last few months. A recent Microsoft patch broke Cisco Any Connect

which is a widely used VPN client. Microsoft has leaded the way for many years

in having a world class patching program. We all know the horror stories and

extensive testing that is required by other vendors, Java being one of them.

Generally most people do not do extensive testing on Microsoft patches because it

just works. Microsoft does a lot of testing before any patch is released and things

are getting more complicated with so many 3rd party vendors involved and

numerous patches that need to be deployed constantly.

If you used Cisco VPN client or the Microsoft VPN client you were not affected by

the latest release, but Cisco VPN client is end of life and most people don’t use

Microsoft for VPN. Cisco claimed that this was not their issue and pointed the

finger at Microsoft while Microsoft stood strong and stated that Cisco needed to

change things. At the end of the day Microsoft deployed a fix which can be found

here:

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/3023607

As a Denver IT Consulting Company we deal with patching issues regularly, but

have seen more issues than normal beginning last year. Here at NOYNIM we try

and stay ahead of the curve by letting our clients know of bad patches before they

are widely deployed. There are times when we consult the client as some patches

resolve critical security vulnerabilities that outweigh the risk of breaking

applications.

One item that needs to be pointed out is cloud computing. If you haven’t already

noticed, cloud computing is revolutionizing how we think and act in IT. Cloud is a

very broad term and can mean different things depending on the vendor and

application. NOYNIM Denver IT Consulting is here to help so please call us if

you ever need help with your IT consulting needs.

Most small-midsized companies move to multi-tenant cloud environment. This is

an environment that is shared between multiple clients and is not dedicated to one

client. A couple examples of these are sales force and office 365. Instead of an

organization subscribing to dedicated servers they have a subscription which the

vendor leverages in a multi-tenant environment. This means that multiple

companies utilize the same server/resources as others. Take a look at Office 365;

everyone checks their web-based email through the same portal

(mail.office365.com). There are other sites that provide access to Office 365

emails, but they are all Microsoft site. You as an Office 365 subscriber will not get

your own dedicated site, unless you have a special plan which is usually for

government or large organizations. Patching multi-tenant environments can be

very challenging since so many people subscribe and use the same resource. A lot

of Office 365 configurations automatically push patches; in fact Office 365 gets

patched before any on-premise applications do. Those pose a risk for all the

vendors that integrate with Office 365. One bad patch can make life very hard on

people. Just imagine that you used a legacy application and couldn’t upgrade for

some reason. Microsoft could force you to upgrade just because they were no

longer going to support your legacy app. Organizations have less flexibility in

staying behind in certain circumstances. This can either be a blessing or a curse.

In order to make sure you maintain the highest uptime and support levels please

call NOYNIM Denver IT consulting at 720.524.8616 or email us at

sales@noynim.com for further information, visit @ https://noynim.com/