Mac patch management involves managing your macOS endpoints by gathering a complete list of all the missing patches through a scan, downloading the missing patches, testing them in non-production machines, and finally rolling them out into the production environment for deployment. Patching your Mac devices a.k.a Mac patching enhances the security level of your macOS environment.
This document talks about the following:
- macOS patch management with Patch Manager Plus
- Supported macOS versions
- What are the strategies involved in Mac Patch Management?
- How to manually patch your Mac systems?
- Why do you need an automated Mac patch management software?
- How does this automated Mac patch management software work?
- What are the benefits of Mac patch management using Patch Manager Plus?
Why macOS patching matters for enterprise security
Mac used to be a rounding error in the enterprise fleet. It is not anymore. As macOS adoption climbs in corporate environments, a population of machines that IT once ignored has become a real part of the attack surface, and the habits that formed while Macs were rare are now a liability.
The most expensive of those habits is the assumption that Macs take care of themselves. They do not. The App Store surfaces updates, but installing them still depends on a user clicking through, and the updates that matter most for security are often not the operating system at all. They are the third-party applications: the browsers, runtimes, and collaboration tools that run on macOS and get targeted precisely because they are widely installed and inconsistently updated. An unpatched Chrome or Zoom on a Mac is the same open door it would be on Windows.
At one or two machines, leaving this to the user is fine. Across an enterprise fleet, it produces exactly the gaps an attacker looks for: the laptop that skipped a macOS point release, the design team still on a browser version with a known flaw, the contractor's machine no one is tracking. Compliance frameworks do not grant Macs an exemption, and neither do the people running exploits against known vulnerabilities.
This is why macOS patching belongs in the same managed process as the rest of the fleet, not in a separate lane that depends on end users remembering. A Mac patch management tool closes the gap by scanning for missing macOS and third-party updates, testing them, and deploying them on a schedule you control rather than one your users happen to follow.
macOS patch management with Patch Manager Plus
The use of Mac operating systems in enterprises has been growing at a faster rate in recent years. With limited manpower, IT teams find it a challenge to patch all Mac security updates and third-party updates manually. This highlights the need for a Mac patch management tool.
Patch Manager Plus detects macOSs that require a patch to fix a vulnerability and groups the patches by severity ranging from critical to low. With Patch Manager Plus, you can quickly assess the health of your IT environment by glancing at the System Health Policy. You can patch critical vulnerabilities either through Manual Deployment or by using the Automated Patch Deployment feature.
Learn more about configuring Mac agents with Patch Manager Plus.
Supported macOS versions
Patch Manager Plus supports macOS patch management for the following versions:
Note:* OS marked as EOL by the vendor. Hence, we don't support patching for these versions.
- macOS 15 - Sequoia
- macOS 14 - Sonoma
- macOS 13 - Ventura
- macOS 12 - Monterey
- macOS 11 - Big Sur*
- macOS 10.15 - Catalina*
- macOS 10.14 - Mojave*
What are the strategies involved in Mac Patch Management?
You can effectively perform macOS patch management either by deploying patches manually or by automating this process using a patch management solution. However, always make sure that the patches are tested thoroughly in a test environment before deploying them to your production environment.
How to manually patch your Mac systems?
You can configure patch management for Mac devices and manually deploy patches seamlessly to your Mac machines by going to the App Store and checking for new updates. If your computer is updated to the latest version of macOS, the store will display a message telling you that your computer is up-to-date. If there are any missing updates, you'll get a pop-up asking if you would like to install the updates now. You can choose the option that best suits you. Please note that when you want to download third-party updates for Mac, you have two ways of doing it:
- Downloading the third-party updates manually whenever they're released.
- Enabling Automatic Updates for each application, so that when updates are available they'll automatically be downloaded. (This, however, may consume a lot of bandwidth, which could deteriorate your network's efficiency.)
Why do you need an automated Mac patch management software?
Manual deployment can often be tedious, error-prone, and time-consuming. For example, let's say you have 1,000 systems in your network and a patch needs to be downloaded for every computer. Can you imagine the bandwidth this would consume? This is where automation comes in handy.
Patch Manager Plus is a software patching tool that offers complete automation with its Automated Patch Deployment (APD) feature.
Manual Mac patching vs automated Mac patch management software
Manual Mac patching works until the fleet grows. The two approaches do not just differ in speed; they fail in different places.
| Attribute | Manual Mac patching | Automated Mac patch management with Patch Manager Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Effort as the fleet grows | Rises with every machine; each Mac handled by hand | Fixed setup, then the same effort across 50 or 5,000 Macs |
| Bandwidth | Each machine downloads its own updates; 1,000 Macs pulling the same patch is 1,000 downloads | Patches downloaded once and distributed internally |
| Consistency | Depends on users installing updates when prompted | One policy applied uniformly through deployment policies |
| Third-party Mac apps | User-driven or per-app auto-update, easy to miss | macOS and third-party applications patched together |
| Testing before production | Rarely happens under time pressure | Test and approve on non-production machines first |
| Scheduling | Whenever someone gets to it | Automate Patch Deployment runs in defined windows |
| Compliance evidence | Assembled by hand, if at all | Patch and system health reports generated automatically |
Once compliance and consistency across a fleet matter, the manual path stops being cheaper. It just moves the cost to the day something is found unpatched.
Mac patching framework
Patch Manager Plus runs macOS patching as a repeatable lifecycle rather than a one-off task. Each stage below maps to a step in the console.
Discover and scan
The agent installed on each Mac scans for missing macOS and third-party patches automatically, producing a complete inventory of what is missing across the fleet. Visibility is the foundation; you cannot patch what you cannot see.
Assess and prioritize
Missing patches are grouped by severity, from critical to low, so the updates most likely to be exploited move first. The System Health Policy gives a quick read on where the environment stands.
Test and approve
Patches are validated on a group of non-production Macs before they reach live machines. A patch that clears testing is approved for rollout; one that causes problems is caught in the pilot rather than in production.
Deploy
Approved patches are deployed through manual configurations or the Automate Patch Deployment feature, which pushes them in defined maintenance windows to keep downtime low. Deployment policies control the how and when.
Verify and re-deploy
Deployments can fail on machines that were offline or off the network. The framework re-scans and redeploys to those systems, so a missed machine does not quietly stay unpatched.
Report and track compliance
Predefined patch and system health reports show deployment status and network-wide compliance, giving admins the evidence to confirm the cycle worked and auditors the record they need.
What are the benefits of Mac patch management using Patch Manager Plus?
Some of the benefits of using Patch Manager Plus are:
- Compliance - Every IT organization dreams of achieving 100 percent patch compliance in their networks. This can be achieved by compliance management, which involves checking the health status of your systems, patching them, and finally analyzing the patch compliance report to check if you've reached your goal.
- Centralized patch management - Patch Manager Plus help you manage multiple Macs devices running different OS versions, all from a central point of control, providing your end users with greater visibility.
- Precise reporting - Powerful reports are just a click away. Streamline everything you need to know about your patch status, and gain insights on your day-to-day patching tasks, so you can prevent a successful cyberattack.
View the full list of Mac applications supported by Patch Manager Plus.
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