Patching in 2026 with Susan Bradley

About Show #1054

How has patching changed in 2026? Richard chats with patching goddess Susan Bradley about what she's seeing in vendor patches and how they're affecting consumers and businesses. On one hand, you have the security risk of unpatched servers, which puts a lot of pressure on sysadmins to deploy patches immediately. And, at the same time, the number of patches has grown massively as tools like Anthropic's Fable have revealed far more vulnerabilities. Then there are the vendors that are slow to get fixes out for drivers and firmware for existing systems, increasing the risk of serious failures - it's not easy patching in 2026!

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Recorded Aug 21, 2026

Susan Bradley has been patching since before the Code Red/Nimda days and remembers exactly where she was when SQL slammer hit (i.e. trying to buy something on ebay and wondering why the Internet was so slow). She writes the Patch Watch column for AskWoody and monitors and reports on patching side effects for Windows and Apple devices. In real life she's the IT wrangler at her firm, Tamiyasu, Smith, Horn and Braun, where she manages a fleet of Windows Servers, Cloud servers, Multi factor, Entra ID, desktops, a few Macs, a local LLM, many iPhones lots of Internet of Things and tries to keep patches up to date on all of them. In addition, she provides forensic computer investigations for the litigation consulting arm of the firm. She moderates the Patchmanagement.org listserve and is daily out on askwoody.com on tracking patching and security issues with a focus on small businesses and consumers.

About Show #1054

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