Managing list of patches

The severity of the patch:

• Critical
• High
• Medium
• Low
• None

The category to which the patch belongs:

• Critical update – broadly released fixes for specific problems addressing critical, non-security related bugs.
• Security update – broadly released fixes for specific products addressing security issues.
• Definition update – updates to virus or other definition files.
• Update rollup – cumulative set of hotfixes, security updates, critical updates, and updates packaged together for easy deployment. A rollup generally targets a specific area, such as security, or a specific component, such as Internet Information Services (IIS).
• Service pack – cumulative sets of all hotfixes, security updates, critical updates, and updates created since the release of the product. Service packs might also contain a limited number of customer-requested design changes or features.
• Tool – utilities or features that aid in accomplishing a task or set of tasks.
• Feature pack – new feature releases, usually rolled into products at the next release.
• Update – broadly released fixes for specific problems addressing non-critical, non-security related bugs.
• Application – patches for an application.

The approval status is mainly needed for automatic approval scenario and to be able to define in the protection plan which updates to install by status.

You can define one of the following statuses for a patch:

• Approved – the patch was installed on at least one machine and validated as ok
• Declined – the patch is not safe and may corrupt a machine system
• Not defined – the patch status is unclear and should be validated

• Read and accept
• Disagreed. If you disagree with the license agreement, then the patch status becomes Declined and it will not be installed