Acronis H2 2025 telemetry shows median Microsoft patch install time of 185 hours (7.7 days) with a long P90 tail of 926 hours (38.6 days), while third‑party patches are faster on median (136 hours) but still exhibit a substantial long tail. The report concludes that operational improvements—staged rollouts, reboot discipline, endpoint reachability, and weekly tail management—are the most effective ways MSPs can shrink exposure and reduce support costs. #Acronis #Microsoft
Keypoints
- Acronis telemetry (H2 2025) measures median time-to-install for Microsoft patches at 185 hours (7.7 days) and P90 at 926 hours (38.6 days); third‑party patches median 136 hours with P90 of 597 hours.
- Global status mix shows roughly half of patch candidates are New/Pending (~50%) and a large share become Obsolete (~44%), while Installed share is low (~3–4%), indicating backlog and catch-up waves.
- Country medians vary (fastest medians: Mexico ~4.2 days, Germany/UK/Spain ~5–6 days; slowest: Japan/Australia ~14–15 days) and tail risk varies even more, with some markets showing P90 measured in months.
- Operational factors drive long tails more than outright installation failure: delayed reboots, unreachable endpoints, and irregular maintenance windows are primary friction points; outright failures remain low.
- Key operational recommendations: manage patching to the tail (P90), run weekly tail reviews, make reboot completion a first‑class workflow, adopt staged rollouts, and report OS and application patching separately.
- MSPs that standardize fleets, enforce agent health/check‑in, and apply a separate playbook for tail devices can convert patching from a noisy cost center into a measurable service.
MITRE Techniques
- [None ] No MITRE ATT&CK techniques are mentioned in the article.
Indicators of Compromise
- [None ] The article does not mention any IP addresses, domains, file hashes, or specific filenames.