In today’s fast-moving threat landscape, unpatched systems remain one of the most common entry points for attackers. While traditional patch management relies heavily on installing agents on every endpoint, many organizations are now shifting toward agentless patch management to simplify operations, reduce overhead, and improve visibility.
Agentless patch management is an approach where patches are deployed, assessed, and monitored without installing a dedicated software agent on each endpoint. Instead, it uses standard protocols such as SSH, WinRM, WMI, or secure APIs to remotely connect to systems and perform patching activities.
Unlike agent-based models, where a background service runs continuously on every device, agentless solutions operate centrally—pulling information and pushing patches only when required.
At a high level, agentless patch management follows these steps:
Because there’s no persistent agent, endpoints remain lightweight and free from additional background processes.
One of the biggest advantages is the absence of endpoint agents. This eliminates:
This is especially useful in environments with limited system resources.
Agentless solutions can be deployed quickly since there’s no need to roll out software across hundreds or thousands of machines. Adding new systems is as simple as providing credentials, making it ideal for fast-scaling infrastructures.
Agents themselves can sometimes become attack vectors if misconfigured or outdated. Agentless patch management reduces this risk by minimizing the number of running services on endpoints.
For cloud workloads, virtual machines, containers, or short-lived instances, installing agents often doesn’t make sense. Agentless patching fits perfectly in:
All patching activity is managed from a single console, offering:
Organizations running workloads across on-premises and cloud platforms benefit from agentless patching due to its flexibility and minimal configuration requirements.
In industries where software installation on endpoints is restricted (such as BFSI or healthcare), agentless patch management offers a compliant alternative.
Older systems may not support modern agents. Agentless approaches can still patch these systems using standard protocols.
Smaller IT teams often prefer agentless solutions because they reduce operational complexity and maintenance effort.
While agentless patch management offers many advantages, it’s not without challenges:
Since patching happens remotely, systems must be reachable over the network at the time of assessment and deployment.
Agentless solutions rely heavily on credentials. Poor credential hygiene can introduce security risks if not managed properly.
Because there’s no always-on agent, real-time status updates may be less granular compared to agent-based solutions.
Devices that are frequently offline or intermittently connected may not receive patches reliably using an agentless approach.
SecOps Solution provides a robust agentless patch management capability designed for modern IT environments. With SecOps Solution, organizations can:
By combining agentless patching with vulnerability intelligence and automation, SecOps Solution helps organizations close security gaps faster—without adding complexity to their infrastructure.
Agentless patch management is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but for many organizations, it offers a powerful balance between simplicity, scalability, and security. Understanding its benefits and limitations allows IT teams to choose the right approach—or even adopt a hybrid model—to keep systems secure and compliant.
If you’re looking to simplify patching while maintaining strong security controls, agentless patch management with SecOps Solution is a compelling path forward.
SecOps Solution is an agentless patch and vulnerability management platform that helps organizations quickly remediate security risks across operating systems and third-party applications, both on-prem and remote.
Contact us to learn more.
