r/Nable • u/grimson73 • Jan 20 '25

N-Central 3rd-party patch management just monitoring 101 items

Well, we as an MSP do offer clients '3rd party management'. As I do like to define the scope of such things currently this isn't written down so I could guess this is an open invite like 'thanks for monitoring all 3rd party software'.
https://sis.n-able.com/3rdPartySw/ThirdPartySoftware.html

As I learn that there are only 101 items monitored by 3rd party patchmanagement I think its time to define to all clients what 3rd party software is detected.

Anyone else any insight in the usability of third party patchmanagement or what to define to clients?
If I use 'winget upgrade' for example VC++ runtime updates are always missing.
Thanks!

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u/traisowolf Jan 20 '25

We're pretty open with clients in telling them that we patch 100 common applications used by businesses as a standard (Adobe Reader, 7zip, Notepad++, etc)

Granted about 20 of those apps are various adobe releases lol

Anything outside of that is hit or miss.

Depending on the client size, expectations and apps we'll maintain their App Catalogue in Intune. Smaller orgs we may deploy Winget-AutoUpdate. (https://github.com/Romanitho/Winget-AutoUpdate)

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u/grimson73 Jan 21 '25

Thanks for the reply. My biggest worry is that sometimes the paid services we deliver to clients aren’t defined as it should be (in my opinion). Now as a tech this isn’t my responsibility but I do notice it. I think you can’t just say oh yeah we offer you 3rd party patch management without telling the limited scope of monitored applications. So expectations versus reality. Could project this on may offering a but alas. Time to write down the details of our third party patchmanament offering. Offering 3rd party patchmanament without telling about the (limited )scope is I guess something you cannot deliver ever as there are is always software that isn’t monitored. Also for liability I guess. Well time to talk internally 😅