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-mid sized 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/