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The Internet occasionally receives undeserved criticism. While it can certainly harbor problematic content and social media may negatively impact young minds, it sometimes surprises us with genuinely valuable services that demonstrate excellent applications for information sharing.
Last week, while driving with my 24-year-old daughter, she told me about Facebook groups in various cities called "Are We Dating the Same Guy?"—an information-sharing concept designed to expose problematic individuals in today's dating scene. Young women who have been approached by or are considering dating someone new will post his picture on the group page to verify he's not already involved in a relationship. My daughter assures me that exposing individuals with questionable behavior is remarkably common.
So what does this have to do with patch management?
My immediate thought: what an excellent application of information sharing for community protection—in this case, young single women defending against problematic individuals. Moreover, the parallel between these Facebook groups and what we're accomplishing at IT Agent (formerly TrackD) is both striking and entertaining to consider, particularly the mathematics involved.
As we've discussed in previous blog posts, more than 98% of patches result in no operational disruption after deployment, making them essentially safe. As a father, it would be reassuring to believe that similarly, 98% of individuals in the dating pool are "safe." While it may be true that the problematic 2% give the remaining 98% an undeserved negative reputation, biological reality and personal observations of young men might suggest otherwise.
Regardless of the specific percentages, having intelligence in the form of actual data to identify problematic actors—whether profiles on Facebook pages or the small percentage of patches with disruption histories—proves invaluable. The objective is identifying the 2% (or whatever the figure represents in the dating world) that pose risks.
This is precisely where IT Agent enters the equation. We function as the "Are We Dating the Same Guy?" platform for the patch management community. The IT Agent platform records experiences from vulnerability remediation practitioners after applying specific patches, anonymizes that data, and shares it in real-time with all other platform users.
This data enables remediation teams to identify the small percentage of patches likely to cause operational issues, allowing practitioners to test and deploy accordingly. More importantly, the IT Agent platform helps patching professionals identify the 98% of patches unlikely to cause disruption, making them excellent candidates for automated updates while minimizing resource burdens on remediation teams.
Consider IT Agent the platform that identifies problematic patches before they cause problems.
Whether we're discussing sharing indicators of compromise (IoCs) in the cybersecurity community, Google Reviews of restaurants, exposing concerning behavior from potential dating partners, or identifying—before deployment—security patches most likely to cause disruption, shared information proves powerful and indeed invaluable.
The beauty of community intelligence lies in its collective protection mechanism. Just as dating groups protect individuals from making uninformed decisions about potentially problematic partners, IT Agent protects organizations from deploying patches that could cause operational disruption.
This approach transforms patch management from individual guesswork to community-informed decision-making. Rather than each organization independently discovering which patches cause problems—often the hard way—the entire community benefits from shared experiences and collective wisdom.
The success of both dating intelligence groups and patch management platforms depends on community participation and data sharing. The more users contribute their experiences, the more accurate and valuable the intelligence becomes for everyone involved.
In patch management, this creates a positive feedback loop: as more organizations share their deployment experiences, the platform becomes increasingly effective at identifying safe patches for automated deployment while flagging potentially problematic ones for additional scrutiny.
From an economic perspective, community intelligence platforms like IT Agent deliver substantial value by preventing negative outcomes rather than simply reacting to them. The cost of preventing a bad patch deployment through advance intelligence far exceeds the expense of managing the disruption after it occurs.
Similarly, the dating intelligence groups help individuals avoid potentially problematic relationships before emotional and time investments are made, rather than discovering issues after significant commitment.
Ultimately, whether we're protecting hearts or systems, shared information serves as a powerful defensive mechanism. IT Agent's approach to patch management demonstrates that cybersecurity communities can leverage collective intelligence to make better decisions, reduce risks, and improve outcomes for everyone involved.
The principle remains consistent across contexts: communities that share information to identify and avoid problematic actors—whether human or technological—create safer environments for all participants. In cybersecurity, this translates to faster, more confident patching that strengthens organizational security postures while minimizing operational disruption risks.
The power of community intelligence lies not just in identifying what to avoid, but in confidently embracing what's safe—enabling organizations to patch aggressively while maintaining operational stability.
We Dating the Same Guy?" demonstrate the power of community intelligence to identify problematic actors. IT Agent (formerly TrackD) applies this same principle to patch management: crowdsourcing data to identify the 2% of patches that cause disruption while confidently fast-tracking the 98% that deploy safely. Shared information protects communities, whether from bad actors or bad patches.
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