Security Patch Management

Security Patch Management

Document number: 12034

SMS is used to deploy security-related software updates on the second Tuesday of each month, known as Security Patch Management (SPM).

When updates are available, an update icon will appear in the lower right hand corner of your desktop, in the system tray, and a Software Update Installation will notify you that new patches are available.

You may manually apply the patches and reboot your machine (if prompted) at any time before the due date mentioned in the pop-up notification window. For steps on manually applying the updates, see Eureka! document 12032 — Installing SMS Advertised Programs Manually. If the updates are not applied by the due date, they will install immediately, and if needed, will force your machine to reboot once the updates are installed.

The patches may require a reboot of your machine. package may require multiple reboots to completely update a system. The SPM environment will not patch a system if it detects other tasks waiting to be implemented on the next restart. The SPM application will force the restart, and wait for the next scheduled run to implement the pending patches. There have been instances where a machine has restarted up to 5 times before all of the pending operations have completed, allowing the applicable patches to install.