Marimba Tool Set

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Verizon IT and its Desktop Support Organization have been very satisfied
users of Marimba desktop products.  Verizon is not, however, a user of the
Marimba desktop patch management product referred to in the prior posting
from Neil Buchanan. Note, too, that Mr. Buchanan is not involved with the
Desktop Patch Management organization, and the posting represents his
personal views and not those of Verizon IT or any Verizon organization.

That said, delivering security patches across any large corporation can be
a daunting task, particularly at the rate vulnerabilites are being exposed
today.  That task is made more complex by the parts of our environments
that are more heterogenous.  Corporations that take these security threats
seriously have, over the last year, learned a lot about how to manage
required security updates without significant impact to their core
businesses.  It is the experience of many that the majority of the issues
with vulnerability management have been more process and patch oriented,
rather than being associated with a software distribution tool.  While
those distribution vehicles are relatively mature, the complexities of
installing some of the required updates across a heterogenous environment
has been, and will continue to be, very challenging.

Many organizations, including Verizon, have ultimately engineered their own
security management process outside the software distribution vehicle, only
using that delivery mechanism on the back end to install patches on
targeted workstations.  While that process eliminates most of the problems
experienced early on in the patch process, the complexity of updating
heterogenous parts of our environments will persist for some time.  BUT
these issues are NOT related to any distribution product.

I suggest that some comments/issues questioning software distribution tools
are better directed to the complexity of both our environments and the
patches we need to apply to those environments, rather than those
supporting distribution tools.




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