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.
For this June release cycle from Microsoft, we have grouped the critical updates and required testing efforts into different functional areas including:
Microsoft Office
- Microsoft SharePoint will require basic document opening and multi-user access tests this month.
Microsoft .NET and Developer Tools
- There are no updates to Microsoft .NET requiring application portfolio testing this month.
Windows
The following core Microsoft features have updated this month including:
- Changes to Secure Boot will require testing of all 3rd party drivers.
- Code integrity policies need to be verified for Windows Lockdown (WLDP), Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG) and the Windows Driver Policy for Intune deployments. We recommend that you test your Windows desktop sandbox and ensure that it boots correctly
- Changes to Windows networking will require testing at least two DHCP servers
- Remote desktop related updates will require VPN connection tests. Try out some administrative commands from the Microsoft Management console (MMC) such as adding, connecting and disconnecting VPN connections.
This month’s Patch Tuesday update affects several core systems such as Kernel32 and Win32K.SYS sub-systems. Unfortunately, these changes affect how applications behave at a fundamental level. This makes testing not just hard, but broad and expansive across your application portfolio. The Readiness team suggests that the following general application tests are performed against ALL of your core line-of-business applications this month.
- Test as many windows and pop-ups as possible
- Check window title bars for errors, poorly formatted text
- Check for unusual items in the Windows taskbar
- Thoroughly test File explorer (sorry about that)
- Test multiple applications, with multiple windows
Automated testing will help with these scenarios (especially a testing platform that offers a “delta” or comparison between builds). However, for your line of business applications getting the application owner (doing a UAT) to test and approve the testing results is still absolutely essential.
