Each month, the team at Readiness analyses the latest Patch Tuesday updates from Microsoft and provides detailed, actionable testing guidance. This guidance is based on assessing a large application portfolio and a detailed analysis of the Microsoft patches and their potential impact on the Windows platforms and application installations.
Given the large number of changes included in this April patch cycle, I have broken down the testing scenarios into standard and high risk profiles:
- Test your network connectivity (use the Web and Teams) with a VPN and dial-up (PPPoE and SSTP).
- Test your Bluetooth connections. Just for fun, try printing from Bluetooth. OK, that isn’t funny.
- When testing your VPN and IKEv2 and L2TP ensure that the testing profile includes a connectivity check.
- Test out sound/audio over RDP desktop sessions.
High Risk:
Microsoft has made some significant changes to how the SQLOLEDB component functions. SQLOLEDb is a core Microsoft component that handles SQL to OLE API calls. This is not the first time that this key data focused component has been patched by Microsoft with a major update just last September. The Assessment team at Readiness highly recommends an application portfolio scan for all applications (and their dependencies) that include references to the Microsoft library SQLOLEDB.DLL. Scanning application packages for ODBC references will raise a lot of “noise” and so the library dependency check is preferred in this instance. Once done, database connectivity tests should be conducted, and we suspect most importantly that these tests should be done over a VPN or a less stable internet connection.
All these (both standard and high-risk) scenarios will require significant application level testing before a general deployment of this month’s update. In addition to the SQL connectivity testing requirements, we also suggest the following “smoke” tests for your systems:
- Test out the Windows on-screen keyboard (OSK)
- Test booting your Windows desktop systems from a RAM disk
- Test the Windows logging system (CLFS) with a create/read/update/delete test (CRUD)
We also have to take into account the latest update for Adobe Reader this month, so please include a printing test in your deployment effort.
