Patch management is one of those responsibilities everyone agrees is essential, yet very few teams feel confident about. The organizations I speak with every week are not struggling because they lack urgency or awareness. They are struggling because the environment around patching has changed dramatically.
In our recent webinar, Patching without the pain: How Tines and Iru (formerly Kandji) simplify updates securely and at scale, I joined Weldon Dodd, Distinguished Engineer at Iru (formerly Kandji) , to break down the real reasons patching continues to stall, even inside mature teams, and why traditional approaches no longer fit the environments we operate in today. Weldon summed up the core challenge early in the conversation when he noted, “Patching is right at the top of the list for every admin I talk to.”
Below are the patterns we see across organizations of every size and the practices that help teams make meaningful, sustainable progress.
When environments outgrow manual processes
Every IT team I know is dealing with complexity that grows faster than headcount. Devices sit in every region and time zone. Teams adopt new SaaS tools without always looping in IT. OS versions drift. Shadow IT never fully disappears.
This challenge isn’t unique to any one org. As Weldon explained:
Apple admins everywhere are dealing with the same complexity – devices all over the world, OS drift, and multiple teams touching patching. Without the right tooling, inconsistencies creep in fast.
In these environments, manual processes do not scale. Even well-intentioned teams end up with inconsistent patch coverage because every environment has its own set of steps, owners, or exceptions.
When processes become orchestrated and automated, teams finally see the entire landscape at once. They can group devices by OS, team, risk level, or business criticality. They can apply consistent logic regardless of where a device sits. And they can move from tribal knowledge to transparent, repeatable workflows that anyone on the team can understand.
This shift alone changes everything. When patching is structured instead of improvised, nothing falls through the cracks.
Creating shared workflows between Security and IT
Patching depends on coordinated timing. Security teams identify the vulnerabilities. Device teams apply the updates. But in many organizations, these teams work from different systems, different priorities, and different communication cadences.
What happens next is predictable. Security sends a list of vulnerable devices. IT reviews it manually. The list changes by the time the work begins. A new spreadsheet arrives. Then another. This back-and-forth slows response times and creates friction between teams who are trying to solve the same problem.
Weldon described this problem clearly: “One team sends a CSV of devices to patch, the other patches them, then sends a new CSV back. By then, the first team has already generated another list. That back-and-forth adds real friction.”
Orchestration and automation removes that friction. Instead of trading CSVs, teams use shared workflows that ingest vulnerability data, match it to real devices, enrich it with context, assign owners, and track the entire lifecycle. Both sides operate from the same real-time source of truth, with clear visibility into progress and outstanding risk.
The result is alignment, not because people are trying harder, but because the workflow itself keeps everyone in sync.
Automating triage to cut through CVE noise
A high volume of new vulnerabilities creates enormous pressure on teams to triage quickly. But in most organizations, triage still happens manually. Someone reviews the list. Someone determines which CVEs matter. Someone compares versions and impact. Someone decides what needs attention right now. It’s slow. It’s subjective. And it creates inconsistent outcomes.
Weldon captured the scale of the problem well:
There's a record-breaking volume of new CVEs. Teams need to understand which ones actually matter in their environment. Without automation, that’s a huge lift.
The teams who move fastest automate their triage steps. They categorize vulnerabilities by severity. They match them to devices. They evaluate risk based on OS, location, or sensitivity. They trigger different workflows based on thresholds. And they escalate only the exceptions that genuinely require human decision-making.
When triage shifts from manual to automated, the entire response accelerates. The team spends less time figuring out what to do and more time doing it.
Building auditability into every step
Most teams think about patching as a technical workflow. Auditability is something they try to add after the fact. But today, audit requirements shape how patching must be done. Regulators, customers, internal compliance teams, and leadership all expect clear evidence that vulnerabilities were identified, prioritized, remediated, and verified.
Without orchestration and automation, audit trails end up scattered across email, ticketing systems, spreadsheets, and chat logs. Reconstructing the story after the fact is painful, and gaps are almost guaranteed.
This pressure is increasing rapidly. As Weldon noted:
There are real financial repercussions for not patching vulnerabilities. Disclosure rules, regulatory expectations – you need proof, not assumptions.
Orchestration and automation builds auditability into the process. Every vulnerability has a lifecycle. Every decision has associated context. Every device has a record of updates, ownership, timing, and exceptions. When auditors or leaders ask for proof, the team has clean, reliable evidence and does not lose days gathering it.
Auditability stops being a burden and becomes a natural byproduct of how work gets done.
Making the user experience an ally, not an obstacle
This is the part people rarely talk about. The hardest challenges in patch management are often human. Some users ignore updates. Some delay out of convenience. Some restart their devices once a month. Some do not understand why the timing matters. None of this is unique to any one company. It is the nature of distributed work.
And as Weldon reminded viewers, productivity and security aren’t opposites. Helping users understand that connection is key.
Security and productivity are intertwined. You can’t be productive without secure access to today’s systems.
What I see work best is a user experience that is both firm and supportive. Automating the reminders. Automating the restrictions. Automating the follow-up checks. And using friendly, contextual messaging that clearly explains why an action matters. When users understand what is at stake and see the IT team as helping rather than policing, compliance becomes far easier.
Automation cannot change culture by itself, but it can reinforce the behaviors that keep organizations secure.
Where patching goes from here
The surface area IT teams are responsible for won’t shrink. The volume of CVEs won’t slow down. Compliance expectations won’t get lighter. This is our new normal.
But patch management does not need to be a constant firefight. With orchestration and automation, teams replace the most painful parts of the process with predictable, scalable, well-structured workflows. They get better visibility. They remove unnecessary human coordination. They improve response times. And they keep their environment secure without burning out their teams.
If you’re looking for a place to start, begin with the areas that generate the most friction today. Standardize the workflow. Automate what is repeatable. Build auditability from the first step. And give end users an experience that encourages the right behavior without derailing their workday. Patching will always matter. But with the right approach, it doesn’t have to be painful.
To explore these ideas in more depth, watch the full webinar on-demand here and download the patch management guide to learn more about how to unlock IT agility with automation.