The Microsoft Security Update Guide

This Guide was designed to help IT professionals better understand and use Microsoft security release information, processes, communications, and tools. The goal is to help IT professionals manage organizational risk and develop a repeatable, effective deployment mechanism for security updates. In this Guide, you will find a glossary of terms, an overview of the Microsoft Security Bulletin process, and a blog-by-blog review of Microsoft Security Updates. The Guide is organized according to the following blogs of the security update process:

Stage 1: Receive Microsoft Security Release Communications

Stage 2: Evaluate Risk

Stage 3: Evaluate Mitigation

Stage 4: Standard or Urgent Update Deployment Timeline

Stage 5: Monitor Systems

Ongoing Stage: Watch

Each section outlines the purpose and objective for that blog, as well as the expected target outcomes upon that blog’s completion.

The supported operating systems include Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista and Windows XP. The download file is available either as a PDF or an XPS.