PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - With companies working overtime these days to solve their patch management headaches and shore up security on their networks, Ecora has introduced its first patch management tool, PatchMeister, which it is offering free to network executives.
A professional version, which will not be free, will ship later this year and offer additional features, such as automatic installation.
PatchMeister discovers Windows-based domains and the desktops and servers in those domains, and scans for patch installations. The tool then compares them against the latest patches available from Microsoft for Windows NT, 2000 and XP. It also scans SQL Server, Internet Explorer and Internet Information Server.
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The tool runs from a central console and provides views into patch installation by machine, by patch or by host. The software provides a link to Microsoft's MS Secure database for the latest patches and information.
"I can scan any computer from my machine and get a report on what patches are missing, and I can click a link on the report page to go to the Microsoft site and see if the patch or hotfix is critical and find out more information," says Kemi Le, network services manager for Cizer Software, which develops Web-based reporting tools. Le says she has been managing patches manually and that free tools available from Microsoft such as HFNetChk and Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer are slower and harder to use than PatchMeister.
"I'm saving five to six hours on my monthly patch checks and my accuracy is better," Le says.
Ecora, known for its configuration management tools Configuration Reporter and Configuration Auditor, is jumping into a patch management market with Aelita, BigFix, ConfigureSoft, Loudcloud, Patchlink, St. Bernard Software, Shavlik Technologies and others.
Users will not have to install Ecora's configuration tools to use its patch software. Ecora will offer a professional edition of PatchMeister by year-end. The tool will offer automatic installation and update features and will add support for Outlook and NetMeeting, along with non-Microsoft applications. Ecora also will add scanning capabilities for Cisco, Sun, Hewlett-Packard and other vendors.
"There are the same problems with those platforms in terms of managing patches," says Alex Bakman, CEO of Ecora. "Microsoft is at the top of the enterprise list, but the same requirements are needed for these others platforms."
Pricing for the professional version has not been set.
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