Mike Bleakmore

Keeping up to date with patches historically meant operating systems and applications from Microsoft.  In today’s threat landscape, however, third-party applications have become the leading cause of most vulnerabilities on the network.  Many companies around the world rely on Microsoft System Configuration Manager (SCCM) for patch management.  That simply is not enough to bolster network security, however, because Microsoft applications are not the only ones at risk.

Microsoft Management Summit 2012 begins today in Las Vegas and if you are attending the show, we invite you to stop by VMware booth #621.  We’ll be demonstrating the latest releases of our VMware …

In a recent blog post by Farzana Rahman, Microsoft’s group program manager of the Windows Update group, she wrote that Microsoft has no plans to support third party patching now or in the future. She writes:

Lastly but not the least, I want to address the feedback from users who would like WU to update their 3rd-party applications. People clearly find the experience with multiple updaters on the system less than optimal (and we agree!) Each application updater gives you a different experience, you have to remember to go visit each updater to install updates, you never know when or …

Being acquired by VMware has brought many exciting changes to Shavlik. With the integration in full swing, we are busy incorporating the Shavlik products into VMware and changing our branding. Continuing our strategy of offering SMBs simplified IT management, the current Shavlik product line is being enhanced and expanded upon, leveraging the sophisticated technology offered by VMware and at the same time extending VMware’s offering to the SMB market.

As a first step, we announced a new release of VMware Go and VMware Go Pro on October 18th, taking cloud-based IT management to the next level by adding additional functionality and …

IT administrators shouldn’t have to worry about having enough time to secure their networks, however we all know this isn’t the case. Maintaining security needs to be easy, fast and effortless while still being affordable.  As an IT administrator, you may already know the importance of patching your network, and not just the operating system. Minimizing exposure to vulnerabilities includes patching: Microsoft applications, operating systems, legacy applications, and third-party applications (i.e. Adobe, Java, etc…). However, most administrators just don’t have the time or resources to handle this daunting task. Some may be using WSUS to handle their Microsoft vulnerabilities but …

Shavlik Technologies, now part of VMware, recently extended our bundle promotion of up to 80 percent off of SimplexITy.  Customers around the world have been taking advantage of this value-packed offer that includes Shavlik’s market-leading patch management, configuration management, antivirus protection, and power management technologies.

By bringing together this comprehensive solution, Shavlik is helping to reduce the costs and complexity of IT administration allowing our customers to spend less time worrying about security and compliance and more time to focus on strategic value to their business and their customers.

The SimplexITy bundle delivers the following solutions at a fraction of the …

As most of you have heard by now, Shavlik announced on Monday that we are being acquired by VMware. This announcement coincided with Microsoft’s TechEd conference in Atlanta and all week we’ve been inundated with questions about what this means for our SCUPdates™ product. The answer is yes: we will continue to sell and support SCUPdates.

SCUPdates delivers what Microsoft doesn’t: a way to leverage a single SCCM workflow for deploying updates for both Microsoft and, perhaps more importantly, non-Microsoft applications. SCUPdates allows you to leave researching and creating patch data to Shavlik – we’ve been doing it …

Shavlik’s VIPRE antivirus engine has surpassed competitors in recent tests with Antivirus.org and the Malware Research Group. Today we add another to the list. Virustotal is a service that measures the detection of viruses, worms, trojan and other malware and reports how well antivirus engines perform. Virustotal reported today that VIPRE was one of only three engines (out of 41 measured) that caught “VideoPlugin_v43.exe,” a new piece of nasty malware making its way around the Internet.

Click here to learn more about Shavlik’s VIPRE engine. …

According to IDC, one out of every five new server operating systems is a virtual machine (VM). Organizations of all sizes are optimizing the use of their server hardware with virtual technologies. Managing these virtual machines presents a new set of challenges because, in many cases, these VMs are offline or templates and are often overlooked in the normal patch routine.

NetChk vProtect is Shavlik’s latest offering to help IT professionals manage the proliferation of virtual machines on their networks. vProtect leverages Shavlik’s industry-leading patching and IT management technology and focuses entirely on virtual machine environments.  …

The Shavlik team has had a great time this week at the Microsoft Management Summit. Microsoft did a great job of creating an environment where customers and partners can come together and share ideas and best practices.

In his keynote, Brad Anderson, Microsoft’s VP of Security and Management, laid out the challenge for IT today, namely the consumerization of IT:

With rigid policies, business users have been going around IT and deploying applications in the cloud (Azure, Amazon)
How does IT manage increasingly heterogeneous devices and ensure “anywhere …

Shavlik is looking forward to participating in the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas next week. We’ll be in booth #523 where we’ll be demonstrating Shavlik SCUPdates, our 3rd party patching solution that plugs into Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM).

In every conversation we have with our customers, partners, industry experts and IT managers, everyone agrees that patching 3rd party applications is a critical need. In fact, Gartner, CERT and SANS all say that 90+% all exploits take advantage of known vulnerabilities where patches have been made available but not applied. Furthermore, four of the five most exploited applications …