Maximize Uptime and Minimize Vulnerabilities with Automated IoT Patching

Connected devices are vital to many organizations’ operations, but unfortunately, they are complex to patch and secure. Manually updating firmware or installing critical patches in Internet of Things (IoT) devices is labor-intensive and can lead to errors and downtime. No organization wants to find that its connected devices have suddenly stopped operating due to a patch. Thankfully, there’s a better way to handle patching connected devices.

As cyber threats against IoT devices continue to rise, it becomes imperative that organizations implement robust security measures, including patching. IoT security solutions play a vital role in enabling organizations to scale their risk management by streamlining the patch process to minimize errors and downtime. 

Enhance Efficiency and Safeguard Devices With Automated Patching for IoT

Applying patches is critical to safeguarding all devices connected to the network, both traditional IT assets and IoT devices. Yet, many organizations struggle with the patch process. In 2024, organizations took an average of 97 days to patch critical vulnerabilities. 

For IoT devices, the patch process has been historically cumbersome. Traditional vulnerability management measures often fall short, failing to identify at-risk connected devices, and each device manufacturer has a different process for applying firmware updates. Sometimes, there are mandatory, multi-step update processes, such as first updating to an older version before updating to the most current version. Each manufacturer has their proprietary software for their devices, leading to a need to manage those software platforms.

Further compounding the problem, many IoT devices don’t have enough processing or memory power to continue operating during updates. This means the devices have to be fully offline to patch, and many connected devices are part of critical processes. Almost all IoT firmware updates require a restart, taking them out of service until the restart is completed.

Automated IoT patching offers significant benefits in both efficiency and security for organizations, helping to maintain a secure IoT infrastructure.

Efficiency Benefits

Even the most effective security teams find patching and securing IoT devices challenging. Many devices lack traditional user interfaces, which means it takes considerable manual effort to identify, test, and deploy patches across the organization’s entire fleet of IoT devices. This can create a burden on teams, who are also responsible for managing risks associated with traditional IT assets. According to The State of Patch Management report for 2025, 98% of IT and security professionals say patching disrupts their work and forces them to reallocate resources.

Automated patching reduces that burden, allowing security and IT teams to prioritize other tasks.

Additionally, automation ensures that patches are applied quickly, minimizing system downtime and maintaining continuous device operation by ensuring IoT patches are applied uniformly across all devices. The result: organizations can better manage their internal resources and improve productivity. For some industries, like healthcare, which struggle with staffing shortages, this can create tremendous relief for security, IT, and healthcare technology management (HTM) teams. 

Security Benefits

Finding out that an IoT patch is available can be a job in and of itself. Each manufacturer has a different patch and update process, and they seldom notify organizations that a patch is available—there’s no “Patch Tuesday” for connected device security. Automated patch management ensures that security patches are applied as soon as they are released, minimizing the risk of exploitation by threat actors. For example, the Asimily Platform searches repositories for patches and continually adds new manufacturers and device models to its patching database. 

While IoT devices have numerous benefits, they also create an expanded attack surface, and vulnerable network-accessible IoT devices are prime targets. Regular patching and maintenance are critical to mitigating device risk. Automation ensures uniformity and consistency in patching across all IoT devices, reducing the chances of overlooking a device or leaving a device vulnerable due to manual errors. 

Finally, automated patch management helps organizations reduce the risk of IoT-related security breaches and maintain regulatory compliance.

Weighing the Benefits and Risks of Automated IoT Patching

As with any security control, there are advantages and disadvantages that organizations should consider. Organizations must weigh these factors to determine if automated IoT patching aligns with their operational needs and security policies.​

Benefits: Security, Efficiency, Scalability

1. Enhanced Security: Automated patching ensures that IoT devices receive timely updates, mitigating the risk of cyberattacks and reducing the available attack surface.
2. Operational Efficiency: Streamlines the update process across devices, minimizing manual intervention and freeing internal teams to focus on other tasks. ​
3. Consistency: Automated systems apply patches uniformly across all devices, reducing manual errors.
4. Scalability: Some organizations have thousands of IoT devices in addition to traditional IT assets. Automated patching facilitates managing firmware updates across extensive IoT deployments.

Risks: Vendor Selection and Other Impacts

1. Vendor Selection Complexity. Not all IoT security platforms enable automated patching. Implementing an automated patch process requires careful planning and vendor selection to ensure your organization has the right IoT security platform. Organizations can leverage a Strategic RFP Template to help with the vendor selection process.
2. Unintended Issues: Automated patches may inadvertently introduce issues if not thoroughly tested. For example, if an organization sets up automated patching for all printers and a patch is not adequately tested across all device models, it could result in errors that teams would have to manually troubleshoot. 
3. Impacts on Device Performance: Some IoT devices have limited processing power and memory, which could affect device performance. ​As a result, the device may be nonoperational during the patch process.

How Automated IoT Patch Benefits Critical Organizations

Over the past several years, organizations that provide critical services, such as healthcare and manufacturing, have increasingly been the target of cyberattacks. A modern healthcare facility can have numerous IoT devices. Some devices are responsible for patient care, while others, like printers and security cameras, are vital to security and administrative functions.

Taking these devices offline to patch or update the firmware could burden HTM teams and impact the healthcare facility’s ability to intake patients in a timely manner. With automated patching, the facility can deploy any updates as soon as they become available, reducing their exposure to cyber threats and ensuring they continue to process patients quickly and efficiently, enhancing the care experience. 

Manufacturers rely heavily on IoT devices for automation, efficiency, and connectivity. Managing updates for devices spread across a large factory floor is challenging for even the most dedicated teams. While the manufacturer wants their patches to be applied quickly, they also want to ensure they happen at off-peak hours.

Automated patching allows the manufacturer to set policies that dictate when patches and firmware updates are applied. This way, patches are still applied quickly and uniformly, but not in the middle of critical processes. 

Automation in Action: How the Patch Process Works

A security team responsible for several hundred connected devices selects Asimily to protect IoT devices on the network and mitigate risk. The team chooses to turn on automated patching to ensure patches are applied quickly to all devices and sets policies to ensure patches are applied during off-peak hours.

Asimily takes a comprehensive approach to risk management. It always creates a complete IoT device inventory to understand the scale of devices on the network, monitor for behavior, and quickly identify devices eligible for updates. 

Because the Asimily platform constantly scans for updates from IoT manufacturers, it has automatically calculated the risk for every device before a patch is made available or applied. This way, teams can see the impact on overall risk from a patch for a specific device. For automatic patching, the platform will deploy patches to devices with available firmware updates at non-disruptive times chosen by customers.

By turning to the Asimily platform to manage patching, the security team can rest assured that all IoT devices will be patched quickly without impacting normal operations.

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.