Patch Management 1.3 New Features

This release of Qualys Patch Management version 1.3 includes new features, highlights as follows.

• Patch Scheduling enhancement: “No Patch Window” – When scheduling a patch deployment, instead of having to specify a Patch Window time frame, you can select “None”.  This will allow a job to continue to run until all of the Assets in the job are able to perform the deployment, instead of timing out at the end of the Patch Window. This is especially useful in situations where you have an emergency patch that absolutely must be installed as soon as possible.  If an Asset is offline when the job is set to run, it will run the job once the  Cloud Agent checks in again.
• Suppress reboot – You can choose to suppress the reboot notification and subsequent reboot after a patch deployment.  This feature allows you to deploy patches, and then use another mechanism to restart the Assets.  Any Asset that has the reboot suppressed will still report the Reboot Required flag to the platform.
• Create Job in “Enabled” state – Previously, you would create a Deployment Job in a Disabled state, and then Enable the job from the Jobs screens.  Now, you can choose to have the Job saved in an Enabled state, reducing the amount of clicks required to start a Job.
• Opportunistic Patch Download – When creating a Job, you can now opt to have the Cloud Agent download the patches in the background before the job runs, reducing the amount of time the job takes to complete.

Availability

The specific day for deployment will differ depending on the platform.  The first deployment is scheduled for Monday, 15 September. Release Dates will be published on the Qualys Status page when available.

For more details about the above features – please review the release notes. Release notes will be posted as soon as they are available on the Qualys Suite Release Notes page.