Stay Ahead: The Power of Scheduled IoT Patching

Most security and IT teams are busy keeping their network secure. It can be challenging enough to manage traditional assets like laptops and tablets; Internet of Things (IoT) devices add another layer of complexity. Despite their ubiquity in modern networks, IoT devices are especially vulnerable due to their complexity and vast scale. And, of course, just like traditional assets, IoT devices can also have critical vulnerabilities that need patching. 

Regular patching and updates minimize the risk of experiencing a cyber attack while maintaining device compliance and functionality. Despite these benefits, businesses often encounter hurdles when implementing effective IoT patch strategies, such as device heterogeneity and resource constraints. Scheduled patching can play a pivotal role in fortifying IoT security, addressing vulnerabilities, and ensuring seamless operations.

Organizations investing in an IoT security solution can scale their risk management by streamlining the patch process to minimize errors and downtime. 

The Value of Scheduled IoT Patching

Like traditional IT assets, IoT devices can become vulnerable to unauthorized access if they remain unpatched. Regular patching reduces the chance of malicious actors exploiting known vulnerabilities.

Unfortunately, the IoT patch process has been cumbersome and fraught with challenges. Sometimes, there is a mandatory, multi-step update process, such as first updating to an older version before updating to the most current version. Additionally, many devices don’t have enough processing or memory power to continue operating during updates, and most firmware updates require a restart. Because many IoT devices are integrated into critical processes, organizations may be reluctant to take a device offline for patching. 

The patch process can also tax internal resources. According to The State of Patch Management report for 2025, most IT and security professionals report that the patch process involves four to fifteen or more people. This highlights the difficulty many organizations face in managing patch deployments. Even organizations with large teams can easily be burdened by patching, as it leaves less time for teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

Scheduled IoT patching can significantly benefit efficiency and security and help maintain a secure IoT infrastructure.

Efficiency Benefits

Security and IT teams have numerous responsibilities. Patching and securing IoT devices is difficult, especially if the organization has a large device fleet. Depending on the organization, finding a time to take devices offline to deploy the patch without impacting users may be challenging. For example, suppose all the IoT printers in an office need to be updated. The security team may face pressure not to deploy the update during business hours to avoid peak usage hours.

Furthermore, 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 increase the burden on teams.

Scheduled patching reduces that burden, allowing security and IT teams to ensure patches are deployed during off-peak hours that are least disruptive for users. 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

By scheduling patches, organizations can promptly address known vulnerabilities, reducing the window of opportunity for malicious actors to exploit a vulnerability. Quickly scheduling and applying patches is essential, as vulnerable devices are prime targets for cyber attacks. Data show that in 2023, the average time for attackers to exploit a vulnerability after its disclosure dropped to five days.

Scheduling patches also helps create a consistent, uniform security posture across all IoT devices on the network. It minimizes the need for manual updates, decreases the likelihood of human error, and ensures that patches are applied systematically.  

Finally, regularly scheduled patching helps meet regulatory requirements and industry standards, ensuring that devices adhere to prescribed security protocols and reducing the risk of IoT-related security breaches.

Weighing the Benefits and Risks of Scheduled IoT Patching

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

Benefits: Efficiency, Optimization, Enhanced Control

1. Operational Efficiency: Teams don’t have to worry about devices going offline during business hours. Patches can be deployed during off-peak hours, minimizing disruptions to critical services. ​
2. Resource Optimization: Scheduled patching allows teams to allocate resources more effectively, focusing on other strategic tasks.​
3. Enhanced Visibility and Control: Using an IoT security solution to implement scheduled patching provides a clear timeline and audit trail, which in turn aids in monitoring and compliance reporting.
4. Fewer vendor-specific tools: While each vendor has some software to help with deploying patches, it adds complexity compared to a single platform for deploying patches.

Risks: Vendor Selection and Other Impacts

1. Vendor Selection Complexity. Not all IoT security platforms enable scheduled patching. Implementing a 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. Delayed Response: Relying solely on a fixed schedule may postpone the deployment of urgent patches, increasing the length of exposure windows.
3. Unintended Issues: Without proper monitoring, scheduled patches may fail or not apply correctly, leaving devices at risk. For example, if an organization sets up scheduled 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. 
4. 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 and certainly would be if a restart is required.

Maximizing Security and Uptime with Scheduled IoT Patching

IoT devices have become integral to modern business operations. Many organizations rely on them for enhanced decision-making and efficiency and have integrated them into various critical processes. Even those that provide critical services, such as healthcare and manufacturing, rely heavily on IoT devices. Modern healthcare environments are equipped with numerous IoT devices, from patient monitoring systems to administrative tools like printers and security cameras. Taking these devices offline for unscheduled updates can strain HTM teams and potentially delay patient intake processes.​

By implementing scheduled patching, healthcare facilities can plan updates during low-traffic periods, ensuring critical devices remain operational during peak hours. This approach minimizes the risk of cyber threats while maintaining the efficiency of patient care services.​

Manufacturing plants depend on IoT devices for automation, monitoring, and connectivity across expansive factory floors. Managing updates for these devices without disrupting production schedules is a significant challenge.​

Scheduled patching allows manufacturers to define specific timeframes for updates, such as during planned maintenance windows or off-peak hours. This ensures that security patches are applied promptly without interfering with critical manufacturing processes, thereby maintaining productivity and reducing downtime.​

Scheduling in Action: How the Patch Process Works

A security team at an enterprise organization is overburdened: they’re responsible for several hundred connected devices and all traditional IT assets. The team selects Asimily to protect IoT devices on the network and mitigate risk. Because the team wants to ensure patches go out during off-peak hours, they turn on scheduled patching and set policies that define a date and time for patches to be applied.

A key aspect of risk mitigation is ensuring all devices are patched and patches are applied consistently. The Asimily platform 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. This enhanced insight into device risk helps create a uniform, seamless patch process. 

Because the Asimily platform constantly scans for updates from IoT manufacturers, it automatically calculates the risk for every device before a patch is made available or applied. This way, teams can see the impact of a patch on overall risk for a specific device. 

With scheduled patching, Asimily not only ensures timely vulnerability mitigation but also reduces manual errors by standardizing the patching process across diverse device types and manufacturers. The platform will deploy all available patches during the predefined window, reducing the device’s likelihood of exploitation. It’s important to note that teams still have great control over scheduled patching. If a scheduled update policy is changed while the update is in progress, any pending firmware updates will be canceled immediately. 

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.