Patch Tuesday, RIP (or not....)

[Lob]

It seems Microsoft is ditching Patch Tuesday in favour of continuous patching - this makes a lot of sense in many ways because Patch Tuesday was founded in the days when ubiquitous, fast connectivity was not the norm.

Welcome, Windows Autopatch

Microsoft: Windows Autopatch steals the 'fun' from Patch Tuesdays

Microsoft announced that Windows Autopatch, a service designed to automatically keep Windows and Office software up to date, will be released in July 2022.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

Of course the concept of Patch Tuesday will live on informally within enterprises because nobody wants to reboot three times a week, not on an endpoint and certainly not on a server. It might be the case that we get more micro-patches that actually don't need a full reboot but rather a process or service to restart - like our browser updates do.

Anyway, interesting news with Microsoft modernising the approach

 

[Clev]

That's awesome. Yeah, no enterprise is going to reboot three times a week but at least they can choose to if something is critical enough to them. And in the meantime maybe Microsoft can fix bugs like the print spooler issues in less than three months because they're no longer hamstrung by this arbitrary monthly cadence.

 

[PHolder]

Unless they fix the need to reboot to apply almost any patch, this is horrible news. I setup my PC with my environment, and leave it that way all month long. I despise having to re-establish it when forced to do a reboot because of Patch Tuesday. The easy fix is to allow updates without forced reboots, much as Linux does.

 

[Lob]

Perversely, it's actually enterprise-focused. I can only assume that they will reduce the reboot requirements wherever possible - nobody will welcome frequent reboots, Windows nowadays does not need it. I can say my corporate VMs nag me into a reboot once a week, my personal Surface Pro 7 gets rebooted maybe twice a month.

When will Windows Autopatch be available?
Windows Autopatch will be released in July 2022. Stay up to date by bookmarking the Windows IT Pro Blog.

How much does Windows Autopatch cost?
Windows Autopatch is offered as a feature to Windows 10/11 Enterprise E3 at no additional cost.

Eligibility/prerequisites​

What are the prerequisites for Windows Autopatch?

Intune only:

• Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)
• Microsoft Intune
• Windows 10/11 supported versions

Co-management

• Hybrid Azure AD-Joined or Azure AD-joined only
• Microsoft Intune
• Configuration Manager, version 2010 or later
• Switch workloads for device configuration, Windows Update and Microsoft 365 Apps from Configuration Manager to Intune (min Pilot Intune)
• Co-management workloads

 

[Tigris]

I'm waiting for the TED talk where someone's presentation laptop automatically reboots during the presentation because of an auto patch.

Microsoft doesn't seem to learn from it's mistakes.