Question: What Do NetChk Protect, Schlage Keypad Locks, and the BMW 328i have in common?
Answer: All recently received a "Best Buy" rating.
NetChk Protect received 5 stars in all ratings categories and a "Best Buy" rating from SC Magazine. The magazine, geared to IT security professionals, was performing a rating of patch management solutions.
Shavlik came out on top of a group of 5 vendors who offer patch management. NetChk Protect received recognition as an "Excellent product with a fantastic feature set."
NetChk Protect was honored for its simplicity and intuitive user interface. The reviewers were especially impressed with how quickly they were able to start managing their physical, virtual, and software assets, patches, and AV.
Getting the honor is great. But I really hope IT administrators take the time to read the article that leads into the reviews. SC Magazine did a great job of identifying what may be the biggest IT nightmare for 2010: patching non-Microsoft software applications.
We all like to pile on Microsoft. It is an easy thing to do given their history of bugs and security flaws. But this isn't 2004 and Microsoft no longer tops the list of most vulnerable software. No. That honor belongs to...drum roll please...Adobe. And Apple. And Mozilla Firefox. Hackers have turned their attention to client-side vulnerabilities and are exploiting them by turning trusted websites into malicious servers.
I give Microsoft credit. When it comes to patching, they have an established, mature process. They give users structured guidance, share research, offer tools to help with workarounds, have well-known avenues to access support, and are willing to go out-of-band to combat zero-day issues.
Contrast that with Adobe and Apple. They are 100% geared to the home user to the detriment of the business user. Their processes and their attitudes show it.
Business users need to demand more from their vendors. What happens to all those iPhone users if a business is forced to prohibit iTunes because Apple makes it impossible to patch in a corporate environment?