![]() This update class garnered the most attention when applied to Windows 7 three years ago, as it gave IT administrators a bit of the flexibility that had been stripped from them previously when Microsoft mandated cumulative updates. Security-only updates are one of the few non-cumulative updates that Microsoft still distributes skip one and multiple vulnerabilities will remain unpatched. Because distribution is restricted to WSUS and SCCM (with the latter using the Update Catalog), and not via the consumer-grade Windows Update, security-only updates target businesses which want to plug security holes and that's it. Security-only updates are distributed on Patch Tuesday, the second Tuesday of each month, a day Microsoft prefers everyone dub "Update Tuesday," as if the word "patch" was objectionable. Microsoft doesn't assign the term to any Windows 10 updates. What the description doesn't tell users is that, as far as we're able to tell, it's used only with the older OSes, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, and their Windows Server companions, Server 2008 and Server 2012. Microsoft's official definition reads, in part, "an update that collects all the new security updates for a given month and for a given product, addressing security-related vulnerabilities and distributed through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) and Microsoft Update Catalog." Security-only updatesĪlso called "security-only quality update" (and no, we're not making this stuff up), these updates contain just one month's worth of security fixes for a single product - say, Windows 7. Some include patches for security vulnerabilities, some don't. Windows 10 version 1809 has been served with half a dozen cumulative updates so far this year. The 64-bit version of Windows 10 1809, last year's troubled (and that's an understatement) feature upgrade, has been served six Cumulative updates so far this year, one each in February and April, and two each in January and March. They sometimes include security patches for Windows vulnerabilities.Ĭumulative is a label Microsoft plasters on a lot of updates. They're typically distributed several times each month and always contain what Microsoft terms "quality improvements," which is fancy-talk for bug fixes. In the Windows Update Catalog - an official distribution portal for all updates - "Cumulative" applies only to certain updates for Windows 10 and various server products, including Windows Server 2019 and Server 2016. Instead, it was after feedback for "Cumulative," with a capital "C," in the questionnaire. ![]() The old way of patching "resulted in fragmentation, where different PCs could have a different set of updates installed, leading to multiple potential problems," said a Microsoft product marketing manager in 2016 as he announced the change.īut the two broader definitions of "cumulative" were not what Microsoft was asking about in the survey. When Microsoft added Windows 7 to the we're-now-doing-cumulative-updates list, raising Cain among users who for decades could pick and choose which fixes to apply, the firm told them patching was now an all-or-nothing affair, emphasizing the "packaged into a single update" definition. Not surprisingly, the two definitions overlap, but Microsoft's explainers have stressed one over the other when that's suited them. "Each cumulative update includes the changes and fixes from all previous updates" is how Microsoft explains it. Microsoft defines "cumulative update" both as a collection of fixes - as when it describes it as something "in which many fixes to improve the quality and security of Windows are packaged into a single update" - and as an all-encompassing update that includes not only the latest changes but also all those from that product's past. We'll update - pun unintended - as necessary. We'll try our best to put some meat on the terminology bones, but honestly, Microsoft's lexicon is so obtuse, so confusing, so contradictory, so. Yet understanding the updates, knowing what is which and what for, is more important than ever, even if Microsoft doesn't pause to explain the differences. Where once there was but a single kind of update, the kind that showed up each second Tuesday to patch vulnerabilities, now there are multiples, enough that Microsoft has come to label some with letters of the alphabet. Since Windows 10's introduction nearly four years ago, Microsoft has multiplied not only the number of updates - raising feature-changing upgrades by a factor of six, for instance - but has also increased the kinds of updates. But it didn't bother to define those choices. Microsoft's questionnaire asked participants to choose the types of updates they installed.
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