Patch Scanning & Deployment Best Practices - Verifying and Updating Patch Definitions

Table of Contents

Verifying and Updating Patch Definitions

In the About Shavlik Protect window, you'll initially see the main app version information.
You can quickly check that the patch definitions are current by looking for the check-boxes under the 'Data Versions'.
- Both Patch assessment and Patch deployment versions should be up-to-date to ensure your scan and deployment is using the latest logic.
- If a red "X" is displayed it's indicating that Protect is see the patch definitions as outdated.
Click on the 'Version Info' button to get more in-depth version information.

After clicking 'Version Info' you will see a more detailed list of file versions. For the Patch Definitions you will see the following:
- The version corresponds to the version of each file used for assessment and deployment logic.
  - Assessment logic comes from HF7b.xml
  - Deployment logic comes from PD5.xml
- The following values are obtained as listed below:

(expected)
- Latest version listed in the local protect.manifest.xml
(latest from vendor)
- Latest version available on xml.shavlik.com, queried at the time of loading the Help > About window.
(file on disk)
- Actual version of the file on disk (either HF7b.xml or PD5.xml). The version comes from within the file itself, not file details.

You can check http://protect7.shavlik.com/ to see the latest information about patch data available for Protect.
- You can use this as a way to verify the most current definition version available
- This shows additions and revisions in the patch data.
- This also may show informational tidbits from the Shavlik content team to help keep you up to date on any changes.

Example:

Generally if you have default settings (auto-update definitions enabled), Protect will attempt to update patch definitions automatically whenever a scan is run from the console.
If you need to manually run the definitions update, from the main menu, go to Help > Refresh Files.

You'll see the 'Refresh Files' window pop up.
- This shows all the files that Protect attempts to download/update as part of its own data files.
- If you see any failures in downloading files, you may need to allow traffic to xml.shavlik.com.
- Check the box 'Close when finished' if you want the window to automatically close when the update process finishes.