Microsoft Patch Cycle testing affected applications

[gdyvig]

Macro Scheduler is great for regression testing applications after installing Microsoft "Patch Tuesday" patches and other vendor updates. Generally these are intended to be transparent to the user if all goes well, so you don't need to update your scripts to run the tests.

My question is to MJTNET, developers, and testers whose applications must deal with the patch cycle. How do you coordinate the vendor updates to minimize issues to your products and how do you notify your customers.

Consider this Microsoft Patch Tuesday:

MicroSoft Patch ----->Supplier1----Supplier2--->MyCompany--->MyClient.

Microsoft sends the preliminary announcements and the patches to all parties simultaneously. I believe they try to work out issues with major vendors to minimize failed patches, but I don't see that working 100%.

Suppose Supplier1 uses an exploit to do its magic but the latest Microsoft patch closes that vulnerability. If Supplier1 does not get a fix out before the MicroSoft patches are deployed, Supplier2, MyCompany, and MyClient will experience some kind of failure. Note that MyCompany has no relationship with Supplier1.

How do you handle this?
Do you wait for the next Supplier2 patches before installing the MicroSoft ones?

I would be interested in any "best practices" you follow regarding patch deployment or testing.


Thanks,

Gale