The new Radia Patch Manager applies a policy-based model to the process of updating security patches across servers, workstations and mobile devices. It will initially support Windows servers but will quickly follow up with support for a variety of Unix platforms, officials said.

"We take a life-cycle approach to discover what is and isn't there, who's at most risk, take action to do something about it and maintain it at a steady state," said Joseph Fitzgerald, chief technology officer and co-founder of the Mahwah, N.J., company.

The tool automates the range of patch management functions from patch acquisition, impact analysis and vulnerability assessment to deployment and ongoing patch compliance with policies so devices remain configured correctly.

The tool is intended to help enterprises close the gaps in patch availability, testing and deployment.

"Most enterprises are six months behind in patches. They favor stability over vulnerability until there's a big problem," said Fitzgerald. "We help determine the impact, figure out which groups would be affected, so that if you have the SQL Slammer patch installed on 10,000 servers but only used on 2,000, we can identify that."

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