In this lesson, we're going to talk about
"Why don't I just trust what the vendors tell me?"
This includes Apple.
This includes Microsoft.
This includes Linux or any of your other favorite operating system provider
or technology provider for that matter.
So today, we're going to talk a little bit about why vendors don't know everything.
We're going to discuss the reasons why System Management is important in these cases.
And we're going to also discuss who these major vendors are.
Updates.
I guarantee you, if you look at the device that you're watching this video on right now,
you are going to have one update pending;
or if you go select "Update This Device", whatever it might be,
you are going to have an update.
Do you just blindly click on "Update All"?
-- for example.
Generally, we do.
We don't think about it too much.
It's our personal devices.
We don't really care what they do, all we want is the latest features come out.
Okay.
Like on my phone right now, I probably have updates.
Okay.
Vendors push updates for three reasons: number one, feature enhancements; number two,
bugs, so something's broken that they didn't know was going to happen
with the previous version that they need to fix;
and number three, vulnerabilities --this is a big one
because vendors want to make sure that their projects, sorry, products rather are secure.
It is up to us to make sure that we're looking at what we're doing with updates,
vendor patches, etc.
So, let's say that we have a system in production and an update just came out.
Do we apply that update right away or do we wait?
Well, it's really up to us to look at what that update is going to affect.
All the companies out there have been guilty at one time or another
of putting out a patch that frankly has made things worse.
What about let's talk battery life on Apple devices.
Okay.
There's been improvements to those, but sometimes, it doesn't work that way.
Sometimes, it makes the features act abnormal as well.
So we have to look and possibly wait to install updates until we're for sure
that whatever updates are we are installing on our enterprise systems
don't affect a system negatively.
A vendor's -- Microsoft,
Apple, Linux, and others -- all have pulled back updates in the past year
because of something not working right when they released it.
Vendors will also tell you anything.
"This operating system doesn't get viruses", for example.
I've heard that one many years, prior to about 2010 more so.
Okay.
Linux gets viruses and Macs get viruses.
Don't be fooled by what other people tell you.
CVEs or the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures are a set of -- not rules but releases --
that vendors make or the industry makes to show you
what has been discovered as vulnerable.
These are known vulnerabilities.
So, if we look over the vulnerabilities or the CVEs over the past several years,
we know that the three largest vendors with the most amount
of vulnerabilities have been Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe.
So, it's not only operating systems, it's things like Adobe Reader;
or what about Oracle and Java?
Microsoft and Apple didn't even start building an antivirus into their operating systems
until several years ago.
Do we trust them now?
It's up to us to make sure that whatever a vendor is pushing out,
no matter who it is, we make sure that our systems are secure.
Good system management takes into account the entirety of a system,
and that's not just the system that's running your service, for example.
This is the entire, everything that it integrates with.
Let's say that we have,
in Microsoft, let's say that we have an active directory domain,
and we decide to update a domain controller.
Are we prepared to update that domain controller
and push updates to all the other devices that touch that domain controller?
All the computers on the network?
For us, that would be around three to five thousand.
I can't remember the last count of devices.
What happens if that update goes awry?
We've just effectively brought our organization to a screeching halt.
So, we also need to look at the users of the system.
How are the users going to be impacted by whatever we do to the system?
How is the system actually being used as well?
Vendors can't tell you all that information.
They can't tell you how users are going to use a system.
It's the old, you know, you call up tech support and they say,
"Hey, my coffee cup holder isn't working"
and turns out that they were using their CD-ROM drive as a cup holder.
That's how some users use a system.
So understanding
what can be done goes a long way to ensuring we are effective in our system management.
So it's up to you to decide what to do for your own systems,
no matter if it's your home system or an enterprise system.
In conclusion, we've talked a little bit about the vendors
and I can't stress it enough.
You need to decide for your self and for your own organization whether or not the patches
that you are putting in place are the correct action to take at the time.