Stage 1 - Take stock of your enterprise's hardware and software
The first step is to ensure the necessary resources are in place and distributed to your employees handling the end-to-end process.
Secondly, take stock of your organizations’ software and hardware assets. You need to know what you have to understand what you need to patch. This is a critical step in any patch management process. Create a document with details of all the servers, software, applications, databases, hardware, and other equipment connected to your organizations’ network. While doing this, add details of the third-party systems and software the team ignored in the past to the document. They could also be a potential threat to your existing environment. Taking stock of the current inventory helps you locate the device and its owner, identify the vulnerable software or OS and decide the number of patches required for deployment.