While Patchman might not be the newest cape crusader in the Marvel Universe, we do think you will benefit from it’s super powers.

In this article, Josh explained why it is so important to keep your software up to date., but let’s face it, updating can be a chore.

You need to ensure the update doesn’t break any custom code, themes, plugins, etc.  You have to consider the time required to do the update but also test it, and if necessary restore to a backup. Furthermore all of that requires you know about the update in the first place.

For a long time our only choices were to be up-to-date and secure or to be vulnerable. If you ask me, those aren’t very good options.

What does Patchman do?

Patchman fills that very gap.   Every night, like a masked vigilante protecting his favorite city, Patchman scans the SuperWebHost shared hosting servers.    Rather then a gamma ray, spiderwebs or x-ray vision, the tool of choice for this crusader is a verbose dictionary of known web vulnerabilities.    Patchman uses this to check for three things;  vulnerabilities, malware and outdated software.

Vulnerability scanning:
Vulnerabilities are found regularly in web software.  Previously if you were running a piece of software, which had a vulnerability, the only fix was to update the software.    While that is still the best option, it is no longer the only option. Patchman extracts the security fixes from new releases and backports them to all earlier versions.  You will be notified when Patchman finds a vulnerability on your site..  The email will let you know the exact files that are vulnerable.  After 72 hours, if the issue remains, Patchman will automatically patch the software.    Patchman does this via backporting the security fixes so these updates will not break your websites.

Malware:
Malware is bad code uploaded to your site by the internet’s bad guys via vulnerabilities in your software.  Patchman monitors every upload for vulnerabilities.   If any uploads are malware then patchman quaranties those files immediately, protecting your site. 

Outdated Software:
Outdated software makes it more likely that your website could fall prey to the internets evil-doers.  Patchman will send you an email letting you know what software is outdated.

Take Action

• Keep your software, themes, modules and plugins up to date
• For your WordPress site consider getting a SuperWebHost WordPress Hosting Package.   With those packages we do extra security scans and take extra precautions to keep your site secure.   Furthermore we do those updates for you automatically.
• If you are unsure what to do contact us by emailing abuse@superwebhost.com