Hate to tell you this, bub, but you and your 150 machines are small-time, so you shouldn't go making broad pronouncements about who's competent or incompetent, based on your limited experience-- you're just a babe in the woods. Any competent administrator of large entities of the sort that are getting hit with these worms knows to never roll out any Microsoft patches without first testing them thoroughly on non-production hardware to see if they break anything important.
The only excuse for an administrator having a problem with this, is if the patch is incompatible with some or other software.
I fully understand that patches need to be tested. You know when the patches are about to be released and if 3 days is not good enough, then you need more IT staff, or more standardized hardware/software. In addition to that, allocate users/computers into update groups, and as you test one configuration, update that, test the next, and so on and so forth.
Security rollups and service packs don't need to be installed right away, to the best of my knowledge, Microsoft, at least initially, releases all security fixes individually as well.
If the company you work for isn't allocating the resources you need to roll out patches effectively, tell them, if they don't/can't give you what you need, they must accept it when a worm wreaks havoc on their network despite the IT departments best efforts.
Also "old man", I may be small fry in terms of number of users, but all to often I see so called "trained" and "experienced" people going about their IT job not really having a clue. If you are indeed good at what you do (I really would't know) you will know that the best people in IT are the ones that understand what they work on, as well as a lot of it's inner workings. I never just click something because that's what I am told works, I click a button because I know where I am headed, and why that click takes me closer to that goal.
Provided they listen to us, all the clients my company consults for have almost completely trouble free IT. And we haven't really had an unhappy customer because when things do go wrong, it is innevitably because they specifically chose, for reason's normally related to cost, not to go for our recommendations, and as such they humbly accept the consequences.
Non-issue for any competent admin (Score:2, Informative)
Granted, I deal only with about 150 users, over about 6 companies, however, I haven't even had a reported case of this worm.
The only excuse for an administrator having a problem with this, is if the patch is incompatible with some or other software.
Any competent administrator knows:
WSUS works like a charm, you can tell it to check for updates every
Re:Non-issue for any competent admin (Score:1, Insightful)
Any competent administrator of large entities of the sort that are getting hit with these worms knows to never roll out any Microsoft patches without first testing them thoroughly on non-production hardware to see if they break anything important.
Too many companies have gotten burned
Re:Non-issue for any competent admin (Score:1)
I fully understand that patches need to be tested. You know when the patches are about to be released and if 3 days is not good enough, then you need more IT staff, or more standardized hardware/software. In addition to that, allocate users/computers into update groups, and as you test one configuration, update that, test the next, and so on and so forth.
Security rollups and service packs don't need to be installed right away, to the best of my knowledge, Microsoft, at least initially, releases all security fixes individually as well.
If the company you work for isn't allocating the resources you need to roll out patches effectively, tell them, if they don't/can't give you what you need, they must accept it when a worm wreaks havoc on their network despite the IT departments best efforts.
Also "old man", I may be small fry in terms of number of users, but all to often I see so called "trained" and "experienced" people going about their IT job not really having a clue. If you are indeed good at what you do (I really would't know) you will know that the best people in IT are the ones that understand what they work on, as well as a lot of it's inner workings. I never just click something because that's what I am told works, I click a button because I know where I am headed, and why that click takes me closer to that goal.
Provided they listen to us, all the clients my company consults for have almost completely trouble free IT. And we haven't really had an unhappy customer because when things do go wrong, it is innevitably because they specifically chose, for reason's normally related to cost, not to go for our recommendations, and as such they humbly accept the consequences.