Software Patching Needn't Be a Can of Worms
Talkat SREcon19 Europe/Middle East/Africa · on Thursday, 2019-10-03· at 16:45· Track 2: The Liffey A·
summary
Argues that automation replaces tedious manual patching by doing four repeatable steps: inventory, assess and classify, plan rollout and rollback, then repeat. Cites concrete tooling and approaches: Play Store and OS over‑the‑air updates, Tesla OTA versus Ford’s paywalled manual firmware, Windows Update Offline Scan File, Linux Vendor Firmware Service and container scanners. Recommends incremental rollouts (canary → 5% → 15% → 100%) and notes real cost of lag: NHS had ~2% XP plus widespread unpatched hosts in WannaCry. Automation reduces surprise and recovery time.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (13)
- 0:00Intro
- 8:10Automation
- 13:50Flag Day
- 14:00Reactive vs Proactive
- 16:18Wannacry ransomware attack
- 17:46Rollout and rollback
- 19:40No bugfree software
- 20:03Ideas
- 21:04Software
- 24:00Release Notes
- 25:20What do you already do
- 25:43The best day to start
- 27:45Questions
related talks
28mSo You Think You Can Patch
39mTo Patch or Not to Patch OT— A Risk Management Decision
21mKeepers of the Machines: Examining How System Administrators Manage Software Updates
30mDevOps Patterns and Antipatterns for Continuous Software Updates
50mDevOps Patterns & Antipatterns for Continuous Software Updates
45mSoftware Updates for Connected Devices: Key Considerations
48mDevOps Patterns and Antipatterns for Continuous Software Updates
05mDo this, not that: Antipatterns in Continuous Deployment