Fortifying Your Network At Scale With Bulk IoT Patching

Imagine manually updating hundreds or thousands of Internet of Things (IoT) devices to protect them against a critical vulnerability. In all likelihood, you’d overlook a device (or ten) and make a few mistakes applying the patches. From that point on, you’d have devices with different patch levels, and therefore a more complex attack surface to manage. This is the same hurdle countless organizations face trying to safeguard their device fleet and manage their attack surface.

The proliferation of IoT devices has unlocked new levels of efficiency across all industries. But as the number of connected devices grows, so does the complexity of keeping them secure and operational. Further, since each device manufacturer typically has their own software, learning how to use each one puts a burden on already taxed security teams. Unpatched and outdated firmware remains one of the biggest risks for these devices. Adversaries pounce on these weaknesses, knowing they can work faster than most defenders, or at least one. For organizations managing large fleets of IoT devices, bulk patching is critical to manage risk across their entire device fleet.

Bulk IoT patching allows organizations to automate and schedule firmware updates for large volumes of devices, streamlining the effort required to keep device fleets secure. Instead of manually patching individual devices, IT and security teams can now deploy updates across all similar devices with just a few clicks. This reduces human error and dramatically cuts down the time needed to protect your network from emerging threats.

The Challenge: Scale, Diversity, and Downtime

Most organizations have a wide variety of IoT devices across many manufacturers, each with its own update requirements. For example, manufacturers rely on IoT devices for everything from security and monitoring to automation and predictive maintenance. As a result, manufacturing averages 47 IoT devices per thousand square feet of factory space.

Due to the criticality of IoT devices, there is often tension between security needs and operational uptime. Security and IT teams may be hesitant to patch during business hours for fear of disrupting workflows, yet delaying updates can leave vulnerabilities wide open. According to The State of Patch Management report for 2025, more than three-quarters of IT and security professionals report that deploying a patch takes one week or more. Often, these extended deployment timelines are due to large, distributed environments with diverse device types and configurations.

That’s where bulk patching and automation come into play. By using an IoT security solution, organizations gain visibility into device status, patch readiness, and the ability to deploy automated bulk patches, ensuring that updates happen only when it’s safe and effective to do so.

Bulk Patching: Efficiency and Security Benefits

For most organizations, IoT devices play an integral role in daily operations, making applying patches without disrupting operations challenging.

Scheduled bulk patching solves this challenge by allowing organizations to update IoT devices during planned downtime, such as maintenance windows, shift transitions, or after the close of business. Teams can apply patches to all devices in one coordinated operation, minimizing the risk of cyber threats while maintaining complete control over operations.

Leveraging an IoT security solution to apply bulk patches gives organizations complete visibility into device status, patch readiness, and vulnerability severity, enhancing efficiency and security and helping maintain a secure IoT infrastructure.

Efficiency Benefits

• Time-Saving: Schedule and deploy patches across entire device categories simultaneously (e.g., all printers or all security cameras).
• Operational Continuity: Update during non-peak hours to minimize disruption. If a patch that’s part of a bulk patching job fails, the system will pause further updates for safety.
• Reduced Burden on Internal Teams: Security and IT teams are freed from manual processes, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives.

Security Benefits

• Accelerated Risk Reduction: Reduce the window of exposure by deploying patches quickly across all eligible devices.
• Uniform Protection: Ensure every device receives the same patch version to maintain consistency and compliance.
• Reduced Human Error: Bulk, automated patching minimizes the chances of misconfigurations or missed updates.

Managing the Trade-offs of Bulk Patching

While bulk IoT patching offers significant benefits, it’s important to plan accordingly. Organizations must weigh these factors to determine if scheduled IoT patching aligns with their operational needs and security policies.​

Benefits: Efficiency, Optimization, Reduced Errors

1. Efficiency at Scale: With bulk patching, teams can simultaneously deploy patches to hundreds or even thousands of devices. 
2. Minimized Downtime: Teams can avoid disruptions by setting policies to define a patch window during off-peak hours. This is particularly useful for devices in continuous use.
3. Easier Fleet Management: There’s no need to become skilled at each vendor’s device management software for patches, when a single platform can support multiple vendors’ products.
4. Reduced Human Error: Manually applying patches to a large, diverse device fleet creates a lot of room for human error. Automation minimizes the chance of skipped devices or incorrect configurations and helps standardize the patch process.

Risks: Vendor Selection and Other Impacts

1. Vendor Selection Complexity. Not all IoT security solutions are alike. Organizations can leverage a Strategic RFP Template to help with vendor selection.
2. Delayed Response: Relying solely on a fixed schedule for bulk patches may postpone the deployment of urgent patches.​
3. Dependency Conflicts: Some IoT devices require sequential patching (e.g., upgrading to an interim version first), which can complicate bulk workflows.
4. Impacts on Device Performance: Some IoT devices have limited processing power and memory. ​As a result, devices may be nonoperational during the patch process.

Bulk IoT Patching in Action: A Smarter Approach with Asimily

Imagine a mid-sized manufacturer with thousands of connected devices distributed across the large factory floor—4,700 devices in total. Rather than relying on manual updates, the team selects Asimily to protect IoT devices on the network and automate bulk patching during weekends.

First, the Asimily platform will generate a complete inventory of all IoT assets and scan for manufacturer-issued patches or firmware updates. Asmily also calculates the risk reduction associated with each patch before it’s applied, allowing teams to see the impact of a patch on overall risk for a specific device. 

The team has set policies to define a patch window during off-peak hours and selected bulk patching to ensure all devices are uniformly patched before the next workday. This allows the team to plan a bulk update for all 4,700 connected devices without disrupting critical processes.

If an urgent update arises, perhaps a critical patch for a zero-day vulnerability, the team can override the schedule and initiate an immediate patch deployment, all within the platform.

This kind of centralized visibility and automation ensures uniform updates, reduced risk exposure, and minimal business disruption.

How Asimily IoT Device Patching Helps Organizations Streamline the Patch Process

Patching IoT vulnerabilities is essential to safeguarding connected devices and mitigating risk end-to-end. Previously, patching and updating connected devices was an ambiguous, challenging process. Now, teams have better options. 

The Asimily platform has long been purpose-built for connected device security. Asimily builds and maintains a complex inventory of devices, monitoring device behavior for anomalies, and simplifies the process of applying patches and updates, all within one unified platform. And now, Asimily allows organizations to scale their risk mitigation with IoT patching — available in just a few clicks.

Asimily’s IoT Patching solution helps organizations automate the patching and update process, reducing the risk of IoT-related security incidents and maintaining the integrity of their IoT ecosystem. In addition to automated patching, teams can leverage scheduled and bulk patching to streamline risk reduction across their entire attack surface. It rigorously tests updates on devices in Asimily Labs to mimic the manufacturer’s recommendations, just at scale, with flexibility, and in a single place to simplify our customers’ patching programs.

To learn more about Asimily and the IoT patch management functionality, reach out now to book a demo.