Fleet today added an ability to automatically apply patches and software updates based on cybersecurity threat levels and policies to ensure the most secure versions of software are always installed.

By monitoring both when a new software update becomes available and when new vulnerabilities are disclosed, the Fleet device management and vulnerability management platform can now ensure software packages are always up to date.

Fleet CEO Mike McNeil said rather than having to create a ticket that assigns a task to an IT administrator, the policy engine in the Fleet platform compares installed software, configurations, and system metrics with known vulnerability databases and the latest available releases of software. When a device falls out of compliance, Fleet automatically updates the software or performs a more advanced mitigation such as uninstalling the old version depending on the custom policies defined by an IT team.

The policy engine by default runs every hour or can be configured to run at specified intervals. The platform also generates reports showing which devices have, or had, out-of-date software running and the length of time they were exposed to critical vulnerabilities over the last 30 days.

At a time when AI models can now discover any number of zero-day vulnerabilities that adversaries can then weaponize in a few hours using the same AI technologies, IT teams now need an autonomous endpoint management system that enables them to continuously patch and update applications and devices, said McNeil.

That capability is crucial because even before more advanced AI models such as Mythos from Anthropic become available, vulnerabilities are now being exploited 100 times faster on average in 2026 than three years ago, he added. The window between disclosure and weaponization is no longer measured in weeks but rather hours, noted McNeil.

Some organizations are now being required to apply patches to critical systems in three days or less. Given that pressure, IT teams will need a lot more visibility into IT environments to automate patch management, he said.

Historically, IT teams have tended to delay applying patches until they were tested and well validated. The concern is that, after installing a patch, an application might be taken offline. In effect, the patch cure may be worse than the proverbial disease. However, times have changed. Cybercriminals can now use AI to create exploits and launch attacks in a matter of hours. In many cases, the amount of damage those attacks might inflict now represents a higher risk than a patch that might adversely impact an application for a few hours before being rolled back. IT teams may still not want to update systems in the middle of the day, but as patch management becomes more automated the overall level of inherent risk that a software update might represent is declining.

Each IT team will, depending on the complexity of an application, need to define a set of update policies but as a general rule the sooner a patch is applied, the more resilient the overall organization should be. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a successful cyberattack ever again, but it does cut down the chances an organization will be victimized by adversaries that have no shortage of skills and resources.