"Patch Faster" Is Not a Strategy Anymore

I still believe in patching. Let me get that out of the way first.Patching is one of the most basic security controls we have, and it is basic for a reason. If a vendor ships a fix for a vulnerability that attackers are using in the wild, applying that fix is usually the cleanest way to close the door. No amount of clever detection engineering, firewall wizardry, or policy language changes that.But I also think the phrase “patch faster” has become one of those security sayings that sounds useful until you have to operate it in the real world.If you work in IT, security, or the MSP world, you already know the problem. Patches are not applied in a vacuum. They touch production systems, business applications, remote users, medical devices, manufacturing gear, firewalls, VPN appliances, accounting software, line-of-business apps, and the one server nobody wants to reboot because it has been “special” since 2017.So when the industry says “just patch faster,” my first reaction is usually:…