Auditing Updates

After you deploy an update, it is important to audit your work. Ideally, someone who is not responsible for deploying the update should perform the actual audit. This reduces the possibility that the person or group responsible for deploying the update would unintentionally overlook the same set of computers during both update deployment and auditing; it would also reduce the likelihood of someone deliberately covering up oversights or mistakes.

Auditing an update that resolves a security vulnerability can be done in one of two ways. The simplest way to audit is to use a tool, such as MBSA, to check for the presence of the update. This can also be done by checking the version of updated files and verifying that the version matches the version of the file included with the update.