Assessing risk for security updates in sharepoint

Question

We have sharepoint server 2010 farm and sharepoint 2013 farm. Now my company asked me to install Microsoft security patches on both and do some research about their impact. such as (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-100)

Could you please give me some advise because I am totally new to this kind of tasks. I need a kind of checklist for installing security patches

Answer 1

This is not easy task, you have to careful what you installing.

1. First check what is your SharePoint current Patch level.
2. Instead of applying the security patch, i would install the CU( which include the security patch).

When you pick a CU make sure your farm is on base level for that CU. Lets say you pick the May CU 2015 for both(2010, 2013).

Base Line:

• Sharepoint 2010..SP2 installed before installing the May CU(This CU includes all SharePoint 2010 fixes released since SP2. The CU does not include SP2.).
• Sharepoint 2013...all Updates for SharePoint 2013 require SharePoint Server 2013 SP1 to be installed first before MAY CU 2015(This CU includes all SharePoint 2013 fixes released since SP1. The CU does not include SP)

Always Apply the CU into test farm first and then Perform the testing and testing. After that proper plan and schedule it because this required downtime for SharePoint. also check this best practice.http://blog.crsw.com/2014/02/05/sharepoint-cumulative-updates-best-practices/

Here are the steps.

• install the updates on all sharepoint server
• Reboot the server
• Run the config wizard on all server one by one.
• Make sure all server updated and update status says no update required.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/russmax/archive/2013/04/01/why-sharepoint-2013-cumulative-update-takes-5-hours-to-install.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage