ConfigMgr and Flexera Software CSI (3. Party Patch Management): Install the CSI Plugin

This is a quick and dirty how-to guide as I have a couple of customer who have asked for the same – how to Install the CSI Plugin in order to Connect the Flexera CSI to your ConfigMgr/WSUS/SUP infrastructure where you get the ability to monitor 3rd party vulnerabilities and remediate any threats by patching or removing software. This is a great management tool addon to your WSUS/ConfigMgr infrastructure and is a must for a complete patch management solution. If you are new to Flexera Software CSI I suggest you go to the following links where you can read up [...]

By |2017-05-14T18:56:16+01:00maj 14th, 2017|Configuration Manager (SCCM)|Kommentarer lukket til ConfigMgr and Flexera Software CSI (3. Party Patch Management): Install the CSI Plugin

ConfigMgr Software Update scanning failed with OnScanComplete with error=0x80244017

Scanning, deploying and installing software updates should be a walk in the park, and most of the times it is. But (luckily) sometimes we run into issues that we haven’t seen before. Like in this case where clients stopped scanning for software updates in ConfigMgr 1602. What I have learned in my years working with ConfigMgr is that software update issues often are caused by older version of the Windows Update agent, configuration change on the WSUS server(s) or a change in the infrastructure. The challenge is to figure out is what category your issues falls into. Normally, it’s fairly [...]

By |2016-04-24T12:19:29+01:00april 24th, 2016|Configuration Manager (SCCM), General info|2 Comments

House of Cards–The ConfigMgr Software Update Point and WSUS

A Card house; fun to build but not very solid and when one card falls the whole house often goes down with it. It’s a little like that with the WSUS server and Configuration Manager. Installing WSUS seems so easy but there are still some moving part, and if you get one of the wrong maybe the whole House of Cards falls. Recently I have seen that happen at several customers. This blog post is divided into 3 parts: 1. Introduction 2. Problem overview and symptoms 3. Solutions to fix issues and avoid it in the future Let’s start by [...]

By |2014-09-10T14:38:25+01:00september 10th, 2014|Configuration Manager (SCCM), General info|50 Comments

3rd party updates & Compliance using Secunia and System Center 2012 ConfigMgr

This is the 3rd and final post in my series of Secunia CSI and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager integration. Part 1 focused on installing and configuring, Part 2 focused on deploying and installing 3rd party software updates. This blog post will introduce you to the monitoring options in the product. You can monitor compliance in either ConfigMgr or in Secunia CSI. The difference between the two is ConfigMgr will only show you compliance about the updates you have published to WSUS where CSI will list compliance for all applications found on the systems. Tracking compliance in CSI In CSI [...]

By |2014-09-05T14:33:47+01:00september 5th, 2014|Configuration Manager (SCCM)|Kommentarer lukket til 3rd party updates & Compliance using Secunia and System Center 2012 ConfigMgr

Follow up questions from my 3rd party software update webinar

As promised here are the follow up questions we didn’t time to cover during the 60 min webinar - https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/8113/116381 Q & A from the webinar Q1 When you have applied an update for Flash e.g., how do you repair that version if the application gets broken? Repair so it reverts back to "old" version or can the updated version be repaired?A1 Traditionally you are deploying the applications from ConfigMgr and the updates thru CSI. Unless you update the application/package in ConfigMgr then you have to install the old version and upgrade it again. Another option is to republish the [...]

By |2014-08-21T16:32:01+01:00august 21st, 2014|Configuration Manager (SCCM)|Kommentarer lukket til Follow up questions from my 3rd party software update webinar

Managing 3rd. party Software Updates with System Center 2012 ConfigMgr & Secunia CSI Part I

Question if often get when visiting customers;”Is there really a need for managing our 3rd. party applications when we already patch Adobe Reader and JAVA”? The short answer is Yes, and the longer answer is please look at the numbers. The absolute number of vulnerabilities detected in 2013 was 13,073, discovered in 2,289 products from 539 vendors. The number shows a 45% increase in vulnerabilities in the five year trend, and a 32% increase from 2012 to 2013. Knowing these numbers I get the feeling that only patching Adobe Reader and JAVA is not enough to keep my environment secure. [...]

By |2014-08-21T12:30:07+01:00august 21st, 2014|Configuration Manager (SCCM), General info|Kommentarer lukket til Managing 3rd. party Software Updates with System Center 2012 ConfigMgr & Secunia CSI Part I

The Coretech Software Update Management Tool

As demonstrated @TechEd in Australia and New Zealand our latest free tool is the Software Update Management Tool. The sole purpose of the tool is to automate the creation of software update deployments. The benefits of using the tool are: All deployments will be using the same naming standard. the naming standard is WRK/SRV + Year + Value of Month WRK 2013 09. The names are automatically generated using the actual month. You save time by automating the process. You eliminate errors by automating the process. All deployments are created as disabled deployments. This gives you complete control over the [...]

By |2013-09-20T13:45:06+01:00september 20th, 2013|Configuration Manager (SCCM)|30 Comments

How to run Secunia CSI scanning without installing the CSI agent

Lately I have done a lot of Secunia CSI installations. One of the questions that keeps coming up is “what client scanning options do we have, if we do not install the CSI agent locally?”. You basically have three options as described below. Software Inventory You can use ConfigMgr Inventory and gather information about *.EXE, *.OCX and *.DLL files. This process will get the job done although you are gathering much more information than CSI requires. This method requires that the Site Server (where you installed CSI) have access to the Cloud based database hosted by Secunia. Network scanning Perform [...]

Where are my Software Update state messages

My experienced ConfigMgr 2007 administratos are wondering how it can be that Software Update compliance reports are not showing states like “Waiting for Maintenance Windows” but only Enforcement State unknown or Compliant. The answer to that question can be found in the State Message detail settings for the software update deployment. By default only Error and success messages are reported. Example 1 – using the default software update state details settings:   Example 2 – Software Update deployment configured to send all state messages :   Controlling the state message detail level The correct way to configure the state message [...]

Slides and demo files from NIC 2013– Software Update Management

A huge thanks to all NIC 2013 attendes, once again you proved that Norway is a perfect place to host the Nordic Infrastructure Conference. Two great days with A Class speakers.  Slides from my first session SC 2012 Configuration Manager - Software Update Management 5 minutes is all it takes During the session I demonstrated how you could use PowerShell to create a Software Update Packages and modify the update package in an existing Automatic Deployment Rule. Both scripts can be downloaded here – all credit goes to my colleague and undefeated powerShell champ Kaido I also demonstrated a nice [...]