On December 9, 2021, security researchers sounded the alarm—Log4Shell had been discovered. By December 10, hackers were already exploiting it in the wild. By the time most organizations realized they were exposed, it was too late. Some companies scrambled for emergency patch windows. Others simply shut down affected systems.
But a few—those using runtime patching—neutralized the risk instantly, before most attackers could even make a move.
If a zero-day hit your Java applications right now, what would happen? Would you be scrambling for a fix—or would you already be protected?
If you’re still waiting for scheduled patching cycles, you’re gambling with your security. Data breaches cost businesses an average of $4.88 million per incident. Attackers begin exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities within hours of disclosure. Meanwhile, your next patch cycle might not be for weeks.
That’s not a security strategy—it’s a losing race against the clock.
The Fallacy of Scheduled Patching
Patch Tuesday was created to make IT operations easier, not to improve security. The logic was simple: instead of patching haphazardly, companies would get regular, predictable updates to maintain stability. This worked well when vulnerabilities took time to be exploited, but those days are long gone.
Meanwhile,
- 60% of breaches involve vulnerabilities for which a patch was available but wasn’t applied in time.
- 52% of security professionals say their organizations are at a disadvantage in responding to vulnerabilities because they use manual processes.
- Depending on the industry and available resources, it takes an average of about 4.5 months to patch a critical vulnerability.
For months on end, attackers have a free pass to exploit a known flaw before organizations finally close the gap.
The fundamental flaw in the Patch Tuesday mindset is assuming that security updates can wait. Attackers don’t wait. They scan for newly disclosed vulnerabilities within hours of a CVE announcement. In many cases, they develop proof-of-concept exploits and launch widespread attacks before security teams even have time to evaluate their risk.
Organizations know this, yet they remain locked into patching cycles that prioritize operational convenience over security. The problem isn’t that teams don’t care about security—it’s that the mechanisms becoming available to attackers make them faster and faster while traditional patching processes remain static. What this adds up to is that these patching cycles are simply too slow to keep up with modern threats.
Sophie’s Choice: Operations or Security
An old French fable states that you often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it. Maintaining operational efficacy and efficiency is a perfectly understandable goal. No organization can remain competitive if its ability to offer a quality product is continually hampered. However, sacrificing security in this pursuit is, at best, a short-term solution.
If your organization undermines security hygiene enough, it will eventually face a full-scale system compromise. This could potentially cost your operation significantly more than slowing down to apply patches would have. You’ll find you’ve taken a different road to the same destination.
Implementing virtual patching that operates within an application’s runtime environment saves you from making Sophie’s Choice. Virtual patching requires neither knowledge of a vulnerability to address it, nor downtime to implement it. It is applied the instant a gap opens up in the application’s configuration and doesn’t break anything or restart the system in the process. If you’re a security engineer, you don’t even need to be aware of it until you read a report on it the next day.
Virtual Remediation at Runtime
Waratek enables instant security updates at runtime, without requiring code changes, server restarts, or emergency maintenance windows. It doesn’t matter if a vulnerability is listed in the NIST database or anywhere else online. The Waratek agent uses behavioral analysis and immutable rules to sniff out and eliminate vulnerabilities instantly—even zero-days. Instead of waiting for the next patch cycle, organizations can apply protections immediately, stopping exploits before they can be weaponized.
This runtime virtual patching approach is a fundamental shift in how security teams manage vulnerabilities. Instead of relying on traditional patching cycles, Waratek allows teams to:
- Apply security fixes dynamically—as soon as a vulnerability is discovered.
- Protect Java applications in real-time—without downtime or code modifications.
- Stop zero-day exploits before they happen—even before an official vendor patch is available.
When Log4Shell was disclosed, most organizations had no choice but to wait for vendor patches and scramble to deploy them as quickly as possible. But, companies using Waratek had an entirely different experience.
Instead of shutting down services or rushing to apply code fixes, they were able to deploy a runtime patch instantly. The vulnerability was neutralized before attackers could exploit it. No downtime. No code changes. No fuss, no muss.
Patch Cycles Belong in the Past
The next time a Log4Shell-level vulnerability is announced, where would you rather be? Rushing into work in a panic to see which systems are affected, or calmly sipping a coffee and reading about how the threat was purged from your applications days ago?
Organizations that embrace runtime security are staying ahead of threats. Your Java applications don’t need another scheduled patch cycle. They need instant protection that doesn’t require downtime, reboots, or emergency maintenance.
Waratek makes that possible.
