Failure to patch is not an option!

Patching, whether for operating systems, applications, databases, or any derivative thereof, should not be taken lightly given the hyper sensitive and highly regulated data privacy world that we live in today, and failure to do so can lead to financial and personal consequences.

Data protection regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) require data, whether financial or personal information, be processed and stored in a secure environment which includes staying current with security patches.

What follows is a synopsis of how to stay current with Oracle’s quarterly critical patch updates (CPU) in a way that adds very little burden and ensures patches are applied in a timely and responsible manner.

NOTE: For more information on Oracle’s most recent critical patch update read the article “Oracle to issue 78 security fixes” by Mark Fontecchio at www.SearchOracle.com a TechTarget sponsored web site.

A typical Oracle shop will have many Oracle databases running on multiple machines representing many environments (development, test, quality assurance, production, reporting, etc.) and applying Oracle critical patch updates can be a daunting task, but it does not have to be.

Streamlining the implementation of Oracle’s critical patch update can be as simple as adopting an environment burn in/progression approach, where one environment per week is patched followed by normal database usage, leading up to implementation in a production environment. This approach generally allows for a four week burn in period before implementation in production and allows sufficient time for any patch related issues to surface and be mitigated.

Oracle critical patch update environment burn in/progression may appear over simplistic, but it works, and it can work for operating systems, applications, and alike too. If keeping current with security patches is not happening where you work, don’t wait for a security breach to occur, start patching today and stop worrying immediately.

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-Tech Talker