Patch Management in ISO 27001:2022

Kamalika Majumder | DevOps & ISO 27001 Consultant
Aug 24
5 min read

Patch Management for ISO 27001 Certification

Is patching compulsory? How does it fit into the broader compliance landscape? And what role does it play in safeguarding infrastructure, particularly in the cloud era?

Let’s unpack these important questions.

Is Patch Management Compulsory in ISO 27001:2022?

Strictly speaking, ISO 27001:2022 does not explicitly state "you must patch within X days." However, patch management is strongly implied—and expected—under several controls, notably:

A.8.8 Management of technical vulnerabilities: Organisations must obtain information about technical vulnerabilities and take appropriate measures in response to the risks associated with them.
A.5.10 Protection against malware: Patching known vulnerabilities can significantly reduce the risk of malware exploiting them.

Thus, while the standard doesn't prescribe a specific patching timeline or toolset, failure to implement a systematic patch management process would almost certainly be a nonconformity during an ISO 27001 audit.

In short: Yes, patching is compulsory in practice, as part of risk-based security management.

How Patching Supports ISO 27001 and Other Compliance Efforts

Patch management directly supports ISO 27001’s principles of risk treatment and continual improvement. By promptly applying security patches:

Risks are proactively mitigated before they can be exploited.
Security incidents are reduced, helping organisations meet their ISO 27001 commitments to incident management and business continuity.
Audit readiness improves, because patching activities can be documented, monitored, and reviewed as evidence of proactive security operations.

Beyond ISO 27001, patch management is also critical for compliance with:

PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) – requires prompt installation of critical patches.
NIST 800-53 – mandates systematic management of vulnerabilities.
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) – requires organizations to safeguard personal data, which unpatched vulnerabilities could compromise.

Effective patch management is the bridge between policy and protection across virtually all modern compliance frameworks.

How Patch Management Affects Infrastructure Security

Every unpatched vulnerability represents an open door to attackers. In modern infrastructure, where environments can be hybrid, multi-cloud, and highly dynamic, patching:

Closes known attack vectors (e.g., remote code execution vulnerabilities).
Prevents privilege escalation, lateral movement, and other tactics used post-compromise.
Reduces system downtime, as vulnerabilities exploited by malware often cause system failures.
Builds resilience by ensuring that even if some defences fail, patched systems withstand known exploits.

Put simply, infrastructure security is only as strong as its weakest, unpatched component.

Role of Inventory Management

You can't patch what you don't know exists. Asset and inventory management—now highlighted more explicitly in ISO 27001:2022 under A.5.9 Inventory of information and other associated assets—is fundamental.

Effective inventory management helps:

Track all systems, software, libraries, and dependencies.
Prioritise patching based on asset criticality and exposure.
Avoid shadow IT—unmanaged devices or software that escape patch cycles.
Facilitate vulnerability scanning by ensuring comprehensive coverage.

A real-time, accurate inventory acts as the starting point and checkpoint for a successful patch management process.

Challenges in Patch Management—and How to Mitigate Them

Even with cloud-native tools and structured processes, patch management brings several real-world challenges. Let’s explore them one by one—and how organisations can tackle them effectively.

1. Patch Prioritisation

One of the biggest challenges is deciding which patches to apply first. With a flood of new vulnerabilities reported daily, treating all patches equally is inefficient and unrealistic. Organisations can address this by implementing risk-based patching strategies.

Prioritisation should consider factors like the CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) score, asset criticality, public exploit availability, and exposure to the internet.

By focusing first on high-risk, high-impact vulnerabilities, companies can maximise security impact while managing limited resources.

2. Downtime Risk

Applying patches, especially on production systems, often carries a risk of service disruption or downtime. This creates a conflict between security and availability requirements.

To mitigate this, organisations should use maintenance windows—scheduled periods when updates are applied during low-traffic hours. In addition, implementing canary deployments—rolling out patches to a small subset of systems first—can help detect issues before a full rollout, minimising potential operational impacts.

3. Compatibility Issues

Sometimes patches themselves introduce unexpected compatibility problems, breaking applications or services. This is particularly common in complex, multi-tiered systems. To manage this risk, organisations should establish a patch testing environment that mirrors the production setup.

All patches should be validated in staging before being approved for live deployment. Automated testing pipelines can help speed up this validation while ensuring that patches do not compromise system stability.

4. Asset Visibility

You can't patch what you can't see. Many organisations struggle with incomplete or outdated asset inventories, leading to missed patches on rogue systems or shadow IT components. Solving this challenge starts with integrated asset management solutions.

These tools should automatically discover, classify, and track all hardware, software, and virtual assets across the network and cloud environments. Inventory data should be continuously updated and tied into patch management workflows to ensure full coverage.

5. Third-party Libraries and Dependencies

Modern applications often rely on a web of third-party libraries, frameworks, and plugins—many of which can introduce vulnerabilities. Traditional patch management practices might overlook these dependencies.

To close this gap, organisations should adopt Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools that scan application codebases for vulnerable components and recommend updates. Regular reviews of dependency lists and integration of SCA into CI/CD pipelines ensure vulnerabilities in third-party code are patched promptly.

6. Speed of Threat Exploitation

In the age of zero-day vulnerabilities, attackers often exploit new flaws within hours of public disclosure. Traditional patch cycles—weekly or monthly—are often too slow.

Organisations need to accelerate critical patch deployments by subscribing to threat intelligence feeds and establishing emergency patching processes. Critical vulnerabilities should trigger a special handling path where patches are assessed, tested, and deployed with urgency, bypassing slower bureaucratic procedures.

Additionally, automating patch cycles where possible without compromising testing helps organisations maintain a proactive stance against evolving threats.

Current State of Patch Management on Cloud

The major cloud providers have evolved their patching support considerably:

AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager: Allows automated patching of EC2 instances and on-premises servers. Integrates with maintenance windows and compliance reporting.
GCP OS Patch Management: Offers patch compliance reporting and patching for VM instances with options for rollout control and pre/post-patching scripts.
Azure Update Management: Provides real-time visibility, scheduling, and tracking of patch deployments across VMs in Azure and on-premises environments.

Most cloud-native patch management solutions focus heavily on resources within their own ecosystem. However, in hybrid and multi-cloud setups, achieving centralized visibility and control remains difficult.

Tools often lack integration with on-premises assets or third-party hosted systems, forcing organisations to manage multiple patch workflows separately and increasing the chances of oversight.

Organisations should consider vendor-agnostic patch management platforms or extend cloud-native tooling with custom integrations using APIs, bringing all environments under a unified dashboard.

These tools help organisations enforce patch management in a scalable, centralized, and compliance-friendly way. However, they also require configuration and monitoring—they are enablers, not silver bullets.

While patch tools can show patch status, real-time, detailed compliance reporting tied to frameworks like ISO 27001, PCI DSS, or HIPAA is often missing or fragmented. Security and compliance teams may struggle to produce audit-ready reports without extensive manual work.

Integrate patching tools with SIEM solutions (like Azure Sentinel, AWS Security Hub) or deploy compliance-focused overlays that provide real-time patch compliance visibility.

Conclusion

Patch management may not be spelled out in red letters in ISO 27001:2022, but it's a foundational expectation. Without it, organizations leave themselves vulnerable to both cyberattacks and compliance failures.

Modern cloud environments offer powerful patching tools, but success still depends on asset visibility, prioritization, automation, and rigorous monitoring. By recognizing patch management as a core element of security, risk management, and business continuity, organizations don't just tick a compliance box—they significantly strengthen their defenses in an increasingly hostile digital world.

In the end, patching isn't just a technical task—it's a business imperative.