PATCHES, PATCHES and MORE PATCHES - Over the years we have refined our patch management strategy many times. It is very important that you have a strong strategy that involves testing patch deployments for issues and auditing the deployment. Making sure the operating systems that you are supporting are up to date is an important component of a strong security stance.
One concept we see neglected is third-party application patching. Applications such as Adobe Flash and Sun Java represent substantial security risks that can be exploited to gain complete control of a workstation or server. To maintain a strong security stance, it is critical to keep the third-party application up to date. In the cases where they are not needed we highly recommend removing them.
With exploit kits such as Angler readily available on the black market it is really important to plug as many of the holes that you can and have a layered approach. We are seeing Ransomware such as CryptoLocker utilize exploit kits more and more in our monitoring systems. Keep tightening your defenses and lets build that 10 foot brick wall against the bad guys!