Is There an OS Patching Solution for Windows and macOS?

In ITOps, your support and management of endpoints are spread across different locations, from on-prem and the cloud to remote sites and the operating systems (OSs) they reside on. 

Leading the charge, Microsoft Windows and Apple’s macOS have commanded a majority of the market share (with Linux following as a third leader, but that’s for another blog!), with Windows taking the lion's portion at its highest levels in the industry in 2021 with 89.5% market share. Still, the leader in 2024, Windows’s market share is now 73%, with macOS steadily gaining in pace with almost 7% of the market at the end of 2023. 

When it comes to maintaining security and user productivity, endpoint patch management is a critical task for both macOS and Windows. While it’s undeniable both of these time-worn, industry-leaders have earned their place in the market, the patching and updating of these OSs, can disillusion IT with their varying processes and manual steps that can incur time and stress.

Fundamentally, these two OSs have different approaches to how they address updates and patches. Where Windows has its predictable cadence with its monthly Patch Tuesdays, macOS rolls out updates and patches as they are needed or available. This irregular cadence of updates for macOS endpoints can cause unnecessary churn and stress for IT. 

In addition, IT teams will often have separate processes and solutions for each OS, further complicating patching and resulting in a swivel-chair approach for IT. Configuring and maintaining multiple patching tools takes time and resources from IT teams who are asked to juggle patching with competing endpoint management and security priorities.

Vendor-provided systems, such as Microsoft WSUS for Windows, and mobile device management (MDM) for macOS, only patch their own OS with limited capabilities to patch their respective third-party applications. Not only does this lend itself to choppy and inconsistent processes, but reporting and visibility also suffer from a lack of centralized visibility.

Automox is the IT operations platform for modern organizations. It makes it easy to keep your endpoints patched, configured, controlled, and secured – regardless of OS, as we are experts across your Windows and macOS endpoints (and Linux too!). The complexity of endpoints strewn across different OSs ends here. With Automox, you can put the manual work and separate processes behind you with a single, automated platform.

Since 2015, we’ve recognized the need for simple, effective OS patching across multiple platforms without the manual uplift. Automox patches Windows, macOS, and Linux from a single cloud-native dashboard. As long as your endpoints are connected to the internet, they can be patched anywhere and in real time.

With Automox, you can also easily group endpoints by department, OS, or region, and add custom tags to offer even more granular grouping. Organizing your endpoints by groups and tags simplifies the management of your varied OS platforms from a single interface.

Every hour a critical patch is not installed, your organization is at risk. Executing processes manually for each OS wastes time and increases the chances of errors. Implementing automation is critical to building confidence in your patch process and security posture.   

IT teams managing macOS endpoints are often looking to automate patching for macOS to ensure they don’t miss anything – or go crazy trying not to miss anything. Even with the threat of unpatched endpoints, many orgs and their respective teams struggle to identify a solution for patching both Windows and macOS endpoints efficiently, including their respective third-party titles. 

Automated solutions, such as with the Automox platform, can alleviate a good deal of the inconsistency, confusion, and limitations that macOS presents to IT. Automox automatically detects when updates are needed and applies the correct patch for any OS or software application - so IT doesn’t have to.

As mentioned, macOS updates are issued as needed or available. Suppose an onslaught of macOS updates arises from Safari to Ventura. In that case, IT teams often will have to sort through and organize these incoming updates and patches and prioritize actions with the highest risk. Understanding and having organized severity data is crucial to this prioritization process.

Whether you are automating your patch processes in Automox or utilizing our Automated Vulnerability Remediation (AVR) feature, understanding the severity of your vulnerabilities is one of your top lines of defense. With Automox’s expanded macOS coverage, we’ve done the prioritization for you automatically so you can fix your most critical vulnerabilities fast. IT can now readily view severity data for macOS CVEs, and the corresponding patches, being installed by Automox. Now, you can stop the scrubbing and organizing of your incoming macOS patches as Automox has done the heavy lifting.