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WSUS Clients Not Reporting? It's Time for a Replacement

If you’ve ever used WSUS, then you know that clients you’ve set up don’t always report as they should. Googling the term, “WSUS Clients Not Reporting”, provided more than one million results. Think about that, more than 1,000,000 different responses to a bug in software that is designed to update and patch bugs. Ironic or just meta?

Clients not responding is an all too common problem with WSUS. And it’s neither new nor lessening. Run a basic vulnerability scan and you’ll inevitably find patches that haven’t been deployed on current or older versions of Windows. All the while, WSUS is showing you that everything is up to date. Frustrating and annoying. Instead of focusing on what you need to be doing, you’re now having to dig around and figure out why a tool meant to make your life easier is actually complicating it.

The real challenge you’re facing is the fact that no one outside of your department understands or cares about what’s happening. The executive team just wants to be assured that the system is secure, and end users just want to do their job more effectively, with as little interference as possible. You, on the other hand, are trying to meet both of these needs while also getting everything else done that is expected of you. It doesn’t help that two researchers recently found WSUS to have its own vulnerability that allows hackers to use it to install malware on networks instead of security updates.

While WSUS is provided free of charge from Microsoft, the associated headaches it creates can more than outweigh the cost savings. Stop wasting your valuable time and energy trying to figure out why patches are not applying, either by combing through updates logs to see what is happening, or posting in forums to see who else may have had a similar problem. Your time is simply too valuable.

The better option is to focus on replacing WSUS as your patch management solution. Not only do clients not report, but it can’t handle any of your needs beyond Windows. Third party software, Linux, Mac, these all require different solutions. Instead of managing a menagerie of software, streamline your process and eliminate headaches with an automated patch management software solution.

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