Few things are as damaging to a company as a data breach. The losses can be catastrophic, as the organization loses more than just money and important data, but also the trust of its customers. More vulnerabilities are discovered each year, presenting new opportunities for hackers and making patch prioritization all the more essential.
Attackers often target older common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) on unpatched devices. Given that CISA’s list of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) features well over a thousand vulnerabilities, that’s a significant amount of potential opportunities for cyberattacks. Multiply those vulnerabilities by the number of endpoints in your business, and the threat becomes even clearer. Patching to close these vulnerabilities is a must.
With that in mind, it’s time to examine some recent high-profile breaches, how they occurred, and how patch prioritization can help ensure your company doesn’t end up with a similar story.
Lessons from Recent Breaches - Why Patch Prioritization Matters More Than Ever
First, let’s start by looking at how data breaches can happen, as well as examples of major breaches and the vulnerabilities that enabled them. From there, we can understand how similar breaches can be prevented in the future.
1. Known Vulnerabilities Are Dangerous if Left Unpatched
Most vulnerabilities aren’t secrets kept hidden from users. Many are well-known and documented, with patches available, so ignoring them is simply negligent. Leaving security flaws unpatched is extending an open invitation to hackers, which they are more than happy to accept.
For example, the U.S. federal court filing system was recently hacked, leading to the theft of sensitive court data. The hackers exploited a vulnerability that not only the administrative office was aware of, but had also been previously used by foreign hackers to steal sensitive data in 2020. That means the system had been sitting unpatched and unprotected for five years – a massive security oversight.
2. Zero-Day Exploits Hit Before Patches – Monitor and Act Early
Zero-day vulnerabilities can be a race between hackers trying to exploit them and security teams trying to patch them. For instance, Microsoft SharePoint users recently encountered two critical zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-53770 and CVE-2025-53771). Before fixes rolled out, at least 85 servers had already been compromised, which highlights the need for rapid detection and interim mitigations.
Additionally, companies should be prepared with interim protective measures to safeguard their systems and devices until a proper patch is released. Without preventative measures, a company is just waiting to become the next victim.
3. Patch Releases Can Be Too Late - Exploiters Strike First
Patching is a race against hackers and other bad actors. If you can patch a vulnerability before cyberattackers can exploit it, you win. If you lose, then the consequences can be dire.
For instance, when Microsoft discovered a vulnerability in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS), it released a patch to repair it as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, by that time, cybercriminals had already exploited the vulnerability and hit several targets in IT, real estate, finance, and software, infecting them with ransomware.
Organizations should utilize automation, testing, and accelerated processes to identify and remediate vulnerabilities as quickly as possible. Every moment a vulnerability is left unpatched is another opportunity for attackers to strike.
4. Third-Party Tools Pose High-Risk Exposure
Companies rely on third-party tools for a wide range of tasks and processes, but keeping them patched and protected is just as important as any other cybersecurity measure. Unpatched applications can give hackers an attack vector to bring them right into your network.
CVE-2023-38831 was exploited for months until RARLAB released WinRAR 6.23. Many users stayed vulnerable because WinRAR does not auto-update, so patches required manual installs. More recently, CVE-2025-8088 was also exploited before users updated to 7.13. Both incidents show why third-party app patching must be part of policy.
Turning Lessons into Patch Prioritization Best Practices
After every data breach, there’s one question everyone should ask: What can we learn from this? Looking at these recent high-profile breaches, there are several valuable lessons we can learn to help mitigate future incidents.
1. Leverage Threat Intelligence
Vulnerabilities don’t mysteriously appear at random. We have tools and resources that can help identify known vulnerabilities and ways to address them, so IT teams should utilize them. Be sure to search the KEV catalog and Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) to identify your most critical and urgent vulnerabilities so they can be addressed as quickly as possible.
2. Adopt Real-Time Patching Capabilities
The best time to patch a system is as soon as the patch becomes available, but that requires real-time monitoring and patching. Traditional tools tend to search for updates on a set interval, typically ranging from 8 hours to even days, but that creates a large window of opportunity for attackers. Using a solution with real-time patching helps ensure you can close any vulnerabilities as soon as possible, minimizing delays and improving security.
3. Integrate Inventory & Compliance Data
When you have multiple devices to manage, it can be easy for one or two to fall through the cracks, but leaving those devices unpatched creates a massive vulnerability. Using a solution with patch visibility and inventory management helps ensure that you can keep track of each endpoint and maintain patch compliance for all of them. This way, you can easily keep each device protected from a single, unified console.
4. Automate Where Possible
Manually tracking endpoints, checking patch statuses, looking for new patches, and installing them across devices can be a time-consuming process, prone to human error and delay. So why not automate it? With tools like Splashtop AEM, you can automatically detect new patches and roll them out across endpoints, using policy-based settings to determine priority and schedule updates. This keeps devices updated and secure without requiring manual updating of each individual device.
How Splashtop AEM Helps You Stay Ahead
Fortunately, there’s a solution that empowers IT teams to monitor multiple endpoints across distributed environments, get real-time alerts and automated fixes, automatically roll out patches, and more.
Splashtop Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM) makes it easy to automate tasks, protect endpoints, and maintain security compliance from a single console. It gives IT teams visibility into every device, including patch statuses and vulnerabilities, so they can keep each endpoint up to date and protected without needing to manually update everything.
Splashtop AEM includes:
Real-time patch deployment across OS and third-party apps.
Proactive alerts and automated fixes.
CVE-based vulnerability insights with AI-powered prioritization.
Customizable policy framework enforced across endpoints.
Ring-based deployment to reduce risk when applying urgent patches.
A unified dashboard to monitor endpoint health, patch status, and IT compliance.
Detailed reports on system, hardware, and software inventory.
Cyberattackers don’t wait patiently for you to patch your devices or applications; if you leave your devices vulnerable, you’re giving hackers an open invitation. However, with proper patch management, you can keep attacks at bay.
Each data breach is an opportunity for you to learn from someone else’s mistakes. By taking the lessons learned from high-profile breaches and adopting real-time, prioritized patching with Splashtop AEM, you can empower your IT teams to protect your network and endpoints better, closing any vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them.
Protect your organization with real-time patching and vulnerability insights from Splashtop AEM. Start your free trial today:
