Security News > 2022 > April > Windows Autopatch: Managed enterprise patching for Windows and Office

Windows Autopatch is an automated, managed service by Microsoft to keep Windows and Office always up-to-date.

"Windows Autopatch manages all aspects of deployment groups for Windows 10 and Windows 11 quality and feature updates, drivers, firmware, and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise updates. Drivers and firmware that are published to Windows Update as Automatic will be delivered as part of Windows Autopatch," Lior Bela, a Senior Product Marketing Manager on the Microsoft 365 team, explained.

The covered devices - i.e., devices with all supported versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 - are categorized into four testing rings.

"The population of these rings is managed automatically, so as devices come and go, the rings maintain their representative samples. Since every organization is unique the ability to move specific devices from one ring to another is retained by enterprise IT admins," Bela added.

Mark Florida, Principal Engineering Product Manager at Microsoft, says that when Microsoft Autopatch is launched in July 2022, they will initially use two release cadences: an "Expedite" one for situations where there is a zero-day threat, and a "Normal" one for regular updating.

"Some customers do not care about how updates are deployed, they just need help if something goes wrong. Others need customization options to tailor the experience. So there will be a range of customers where on one extreme they just want us to 'do everything', and then on the other end are customers with unique business logic or intent that needs to be honored while we keep their devices and managed apps up-to-date," he explained.

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/04/11/windows-autopatch/