15.1. Why Patching Is Important

In the old days, when your network wasn’t connected to the Internet, system administrators were the only people who installed software, and users had only a green screen terminal, deciding when to apply a patch was a fairly straightforward decision. If you were having a specific problem and you wanted a bit of overtime on the weekend, you came in and applied a patch. If no one was complaining and you didn’t want to work on the weekend, you threw the tape (patches always came on tapes in those days) in the drawer and waited until you had to come in on the weekend for some other maintenance, or users started complaining about a problem that seemed related. Or you simply never got around to it at all.

Even in the more recent past it was possible to have a more considered and gradual approach to applying patches. When a vulnerability was identified, it often took months before there was any real risk to your network.