Patch Intelligence

Ivanti Cloud delivers a Patch Intelligence application that gathers and aggregates data to help manage, prioritize and streamline patching in your environment.

Known issues reported by customers or Ivanti can be used to highlight potential problems with individual patches.

You can filter and order the patches by severity, which gives you a priority order to apply patches that resolve the largest problems first—for example, Security Critical and Security Important. You can also use bulletin and patch threat scores to help with the prioritization.

Not only is Patch Intelligence a proactive tool used by IT Ops teams to plan the deployment of patches, it can also be used reactively. For example, technical support investigating an issue can check the reliability ratings and feedback for recently applied patches that may be pertinent to the issue they're investigating.

To access Patch Intelligence, click Software > Patch Intelligence in the left navigation pane.

Add a Connector

To add an Ivanti Endpoint Manager (EPM) connector select Add Connector at the top of the dashboard, the Help panel Get Started with Connectors slides out, select Go To Connectors which walks you through the steps required.

Alternatively:

1.Open the Setup menu.

2.Select Connectors. See the Setting up connectors topic for further details.

3.Select Add Connector for the desired server.
The connector tiles display.

4.Select the Endpoint Manager (EPM) tile.
The EPM connector form displays. For more information on how to complete the form see Endpoint Manager connector.

All Bulletins

Once a connector has been added the Patch Intelligence dashboard displays all the devices in the connected environment, called My Environment. To switch the view back to display all released bulletins, select All Bulletins.

Dashboard pie charts

The Patch Intelligence dashboard contains 3 charts; you can click any colored segment on a chart to filter the results in the bulletin table below the charts. To remove any applied filters, click the clear filters icon.

The chart types are:

  • Top Vendors: The top 5 vendors that have released the most bulletins within the last 14 days.
  • Bulletin Types: The number of each type of bulletin across all vendors released within the last 14 days.
  • MS Patch Tuesday: All of the Microsoft Patch Tuesday bulletins, categorized by vendor and severity.

Why 14 Days? - Research has shown that patching vulnerabilities within 14 days of identification is the optimum period to reduce risk of exploitation.

Bulletins

The bulletin table contains a list of all the latest validated bulletins with associated patches, listed in date order by default. You can customize the view by filtering, sorting, or searching by keyword (see below).

You can customize the table view using the Column Chooser . Available columns are:

  • Reliability: helps to determine the usefulness and stability of the patch. The number of successful installations determines the score given:
    • Green indicates a score of 0.1 - 3.9
    • Yellow indicates a score of 4.0 - 6.9
    • Red indicates a score of 7.0 - 10

    The Reliability column is only available when a connector is added.

  • Threat: Highest NVD (National Vulnerability Database) CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) v3 score taken from all CVEs associated with patches in the bulletin. If v3 is not available the v2 score is taken. N/A displays if no score is available.
    • Green indicates a score of 0.1 - 3.9
    • Yellow indicates a score of 4.0 - 6.9
    • Red indicates a score of 7.0 - 10

NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) can take up to 2 weeks to update their website.

  • Bulletin Id: Click to open the Bulletin Information.
  • Title: Click to open the Bulletin Information.
  • Known Issues: Number of reported known issues. Click to open the Known Issues tab on the Bulletin Information.
  • Unpatched Devices: Number of devices that do not have the patch installed. Click to open the Unpatched Devices tab on the Bulletin Information.
    The Unpatched Devices column is only available when a connector is added.
  • Bulletin Date: The bulletin's date of issue.
  • CVE Count: Number of CVEs the bulletin contains.
  • Vendor: Software vendor that has issued the bulletin.
  • Type : The bulletins are categorized to one of the following types:
    • Security: Critical, Important, Moderate, Low, Unassigned
    • Non-Security: Critical, Important, Moderate, Low, Unassigned

Bulletin Information

Click a bulletin in the table to view further details, such as vendor security, threat score, known issues and products affected.

List of all patches included in the bulletin. Details include the reliability score, threat score, patch name, any known issues, number of unpatched devices, and number of failed installs.

Click Filter By Products to filter the list to display only the product version(s) you're interested in. Sort the list by any of the columns to prioritize the patches.

Click a patch to open the Patch Information, which includes information such as if the patch has been superseded by another patch, if the patch replaces another patch, the CVEs contained within the patch, number of unpatched devices, and any reported known issues.

Lists any CVEs associated with the patch. Click on any to open the CVE details on the National Vulnerability Database website.

List of devices that do not have the patch installed. The device name, domain name, IP address, OS name version are shown. Click on a device to open the Device Details.

This tab is only available when a connector is added.

If a device is managed by both Ivanti Endpoint Manager and Ivanti Security Controls then it will remain in the unpatched devices list until both Ivanti Endpoint Manager and Ivanti Security Controls report that the patch has been applied.

Device Details

An overview and detailed view of the device displays.

Any known issues can be submitted about a patch, which Ivanti will review and anonymize. The known issues can help you understand why a particular patch may or may not have rolled out smoothly and any additional steps that may be required. The issues will be listed as Customer reported issues, or Ivanti report issues.

New Issue

To add a known issue to a bulletin select New Issue. The section expands for you to complete the following:

  • Patches affected: Select all of the patches the issue relates to.
  • Issue description: Describe what the issue is in 500 characters or less. Include symptoms and remediation steps.
  • Number of endpoints affected: Select the number band of endpoints you have experienced this issue on in your environment.
  • I had to roll this patch back: Check this box if the issue caused you to roll back.
  • Add Issue: Select to submit the issue to the Ivanti moderators. If approved, the issue will be displayed in the Known Issues, this can take up to 48 hours.

Filter, sort, and search

You can search, sort, and filter the bulletin database based on a number of attributes.

Select the filter iconFilter iconto refine the list using any of the predefined attributes:

Date: Available preset date ranges:

  • Last 3 Days
  • Last 14 Days
  • Last 30 Days
  • Last 365 Days
  • Custom Range

Vendor : Listed in alphabetical order such as Apple, Microsoft, VMWare, and so on.

Type : Categories:

  • Security: Critical/Important/Moderate/Low/Unassigned
  • Non-Security: Critical/Important/Moderate/Low/Unassigned

If a filter has been applied to a column, a red dot is seen on the iconFiltered icon.

To remove an applied filter, click the clear filters icon .

Select the sort iconin any column header to sort into ascending (Ascending icon) or descending (Descending icon) order.

To remove the sorting, right-click the column header and select Clear Sorting from the context menu.

Use the Search field to enter a keyword; the list will then only show bulletins that contain the keyword. The keyword is matched to any case-insensitive text found from within all of the bulletins—for example, CVE numbers, patch names, blue screen, and so on.

Example search use cases:

  • As a security engineer, I want to supply a CVE to Patch Intelligence to understand what patch I need to have my IT Ops team apply to mitigate the vulnerability. The searching functionality can be an asset to both the Security and Ops teams by allowing them to search for CVEs and see which patches are required.
  • As a support technician, I want to know whether a patch is available to fix an issue with PST corruption in Outlook 2016 occurring in conjunction with error 0x80040119. The ability to search benefits the support staff who can search for symptoms or issues around a particular patch.

To remove a search filter, click the clear filters icon.

Related topics

Setting up connectors

Endpoint Manager connector