Best Practice - Automatic Updates or Patch Management

[stevefitz]

We're looking at our options for patch management/app updates. Many of our apps are available in either the Mac Store or Jamf store so we could just use automatic updates. Is there a best practice? Is it better to use automatic updates or use patch management?

[Shyamsundar · Accepted solution]

1. Mac Apps: Once auto-updates are enabled, JAMF manages app updates whenever a new version is released through MDM via remote management commands.

2. Patch Management: Involves uploading new application packages and creating patch policies, requiring manual activity with each new version released via a JAMF policy.

3. Both Patch Management and Mac Apps support version control, allowing you to select the specific version for deployment.

if you want to completely automate the process you can go via Mac Apps, if you are ok with a bit of Manual work you can go via Patch Management. 

[Samstar777]

@stevefitz I’ve outlined the pros, cons, best use cases, and best practices in the screenshot below. I hope you find this helpful!

[ArunKumar09]

I liked the tabular comparison.

[elena56brown]

Automatic updates offer ease of use, consistency, and time-saving, but lack control and can lead to errors. Patch management provides control and customization, ensuring compliance, but is resource-intensive and complex. A hybrid approach combining both may be best, depending on your IT team's resources and the criticality of applications.

[stevefitz]

What I've run into in my testing is that using apps from the Jamf store with automatic updates is great until someone deletes the app. Then it's a challenge to get the app reinstalled. That said, we're a small team so automatic updates would be much easier for us to manage.