Nobody likes the DMV. Everybody dreads that one day every couple of years when you have to take time out of your day to go sit in a fluorescent-lit purgatory, take a number and seemingly enter some sort of time vortex that doesn’t release you for several hours. Every task, no matter how minor, is mired in bureaucracy: filling out the correct forms, standing in the appropriate lines, navigating complex phone menus, and enduring long hold times just to reach the right person. It’s a universally hated experience.
And yet, it’s shockingly similar to the process of manually patching vulnerabilities in your applications—something DevOps and security teams have to do much more often. Even patching the highest-severity vulnerability requires planning, approvals from higher-ups, extensive testing to see what else the patch will break, and managing system downtimes to appease both users and coworkers. Inevitably, somewhere in this process, money is lost, and people’s jobs get harder. The inefficiencies of manual patching are as bad for business as they are for your mental health. But they’re also a significant security liability.
But here’s the good news: while no one’s figured out how to skip the real DMV, there is a way to bypass the red tape in your security process. Manual patching may feel like an unavoidable evil, but it doesn’t have to be. Just like modern apps have evolved past monoliths into flexible, cloud-native architectures, security strategies have evolved too. There’s a way to stay ahead of vulnerabilities without getting mired in forms, approvals, and scheduled downtime. Let’s explore why manual patching is such a drain and what it looks like when virtual patching makes the process instantaneous, automated, and — dare we say — pleasant.
The Math is Not on Our Side
What makes both the DVM and the manual patching process so frustrating is that you’re always trying to accomplish what feels like it should be a pretty simple task. But in order to get to where you can make this simple fix, you encounter so many artificial bureaucratic bottlenecks that you’re pulling your hair out by the time you get to it.
The fact is, patching itself is not that complicated. But it’s the process that’s flawed. Java applications, in particular, often rely on legacy systems, making it hard to identify and update vulnerable libraries without breaking something. Each patch requires locating the vulnerable code, testing the fix, redeploying the app, and often rebooting the system. Multiply that by dozens—or hundreds—of microservices, and the result is a security posture that’s always a few steps behind.
Attackers are not doing security teams the courtesy of waiting around for them to jump off the starting line. While security is wading through a quagmire of approvals from everyone from the CISO to the advisory board to the operations team, attackers are licking their lips and pouncing.
To put this in perspective, 50% of known exploited vulnerabilities are targeted within two days of public disclosure, and 75% within the first 28 days. And these are not limited to high-severity CVEs—many of these were classified as medium- or even low-priority (this according to CISA.) Meanwhile, it may take several months for Java applications to be patched after a CVE is disclosed. One study from February 2025 found that “dependent packages typically adopt fixes via “Available Patch Adoption” with a median time of 151 days.”
That’s like a bank publicly broadcasting that their doors don’t lock and then waiting five months to fix them.
Use Virtual Patching to Skip the DMV Line
Manual security processes often force teams to slow down or delay releases. Waratek removes this bottleneck, allowing security to move at the speed of development. Waratek’s software-defined Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) offers instant, virtual patching without any manual intervention required. By installing security directly into your existing Java Virtual Machine (JVM), Waratek enables real-time threat detection and mitigation, reducing the window of exposure from days to milliseconds.
Waratek’s application-layer protection provides much more holistic protection than traditional perimeter-based solutions, while also allowing for a level of agility that most internal solutions aren’t built for. Perimeter defenses often rely on signature-based detection, which can be bypassed by sophisticated attacks. Waratek’s approach focuses on application behavior, allowing it to detect and block both known and unknown threats.
But the platform also allows DevOps teams to set up automatic guardrails against entire classes of vulnerabilities. For example, let’s say you wake up to news of a new Apache Struts vulnerability that allows attackers to hide malicious code and deserialize it beyond the application perimeter. With Waratek, you already have a deserial rule in place that neutralizes the untrusted data before it ever gets a chance to execute within your application.
Protection Against Shadow IT and Zero-Days
Waratek isn’t hamstrung by the same limitations that other solutions are. Shadow IT—the use of unmanaged or unauthorized applications and services—is present in almost every system but invisible to most security solutions since it can’t be identified with predetermined signatures. According to Gartner, 41% of employees acquire, modify or create technology outside IT’s visibility. Because Waratek analyzes application behavior at runtime, it doesn’t care whether a component was approved by IT. If a rogue module starts opening suspicious network connections or accessing restricted files, Waratek can shut it down instantly.
As for Zero-days, Waratek doesn’t wait for a patch to be released. It looks at how code behaves and responds accordingly. Its patch rules can target any method or class loaded by the JVM, injecting logic at specific locations (like method entry or exit) to validate input, block execution, or rewrite unsafe operations on the fly. This means that new threats can be mitigated without downtime, even before vendors issue an official patch.
Implement Virtual Patching Today
Nobody likes getting stuck in bureaucratic purgatory. It takes an enormous amount of time to accomplish what should be simple tasks, and it has an almost supernatural ability to get your blood boiling even if you were having a good day. Many of us try to avoid these traps as much as we can. We put off calling customer service or pay a fee we think we shouldn’t have to just to avoid disputing it. But when your customers’ trust, your legal compliance and the integrity of your applications is on the line, you have no choice but to brave the gauntlet and get your vulnerabilities patched as quickly as possible.
Waratek uses virtual patching to save you from these headaches. Rules can be tested, applied, and rolled back dynamically—without the need to rebuild or redeploy the app. So while your competitors are stuck testing their patches and awaiting approval from their stakeholders to deploy, Waratek’s customers are enjoying continuous runtime security that doesn’t interrupt service or require risky hotfixes.
