Beyond Patching: What IT Teams Need to Know About Unpatchable Exposures | Qualys
Summary: Qualys argues that IT teams operate under a false binary of patch or accept risk, and describes patchless remediation strategies - mitigate, uninstall, run custom scripts, isolate - that close exposure when no reliable patch exists. The post cites customer results including 250,000 workstations patched in 14 days with rollback rates below 0.1% across 150M patches deployed, and MTTR dropping 30% with response times improving 40% when asset context and risk intelligence route tasks before ticket creation.
Bottom line: The article's opening scenario - a CISA KEV item on 2,000 end-of-life systems with no vendor patch and a 48-to-72-hour emergency change-control answer - is presented as a monthly occurrence in most IT organizations, which means the gap between KEV deadlines and your maintenance windows is a standing exposure rather than an exception.
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- Topics
- Vulnerabilities & Patching
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