Searching for a specific Patch does not give back correct result

tg
tg Member Posts: 7 ✭
in Patch Management

Hi,

I am just testing Atera in our environment. For this purpose I looked up a certain Patch on my local computer, which has the Atera agent istalled

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Afterwards I went to classic reports:

02.png

And there I searched for the Patch

03.png

The result was zero findings. How come? I would have expected Atera to find the Patch on my machine.

When looking at my machines asset

04.png

The Patch is not shown either?

Any ideas?

Comments

  • dragos.t
    dragos.t Internal, Support Moderator Posts: 51 admin
    edited April 24

    Hello @tg,

    Hope you are doing well.

    The behavior that you experience is expected.

    When it comes to fetching and installing updates on Windows devices Atera utilizes the Windows Update Agent (WUA) API. Think of WUA API as another channel that can fetch and install updates on your Windows devices.

    Because we use this API to fetch updates, you will see different patches locally in Windows Updates and the Atera Patch management module.

    Sometimes you will see the same updates locally on your devices and in Atera, and sometimes you will see discrepancies between the two.

    Now, there is no need to be concerned about the fact that we use this API. This WUAAPI is managed and maintained by Microsoft and there are no security concerns that are associated with updates released and installed using the WUA API.

    All patches that are released by Microsoft will be available at some point in our Patch management module. Some updates might appear later than local Windows updates, but they will eventually be available.

    This applies only to Windows devices, and Atera does not have control over when updates are released through the WUA API channel.

    To learn more about our Patch Management module, please take a look at the following article:

    https://support.atera.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015878807--Atera-Patch-Management

    You can also use Configuration policies, to setup your devices to install updates only using WUA API. The option will disable local Windows updates, and you will also have control over when a device restarts because of an update.

    https://support.atera.com/hc/en-us/articles/5499183257884-Configuration-policies

    https://support.atera.com/hc/en-us/articles/5499199743388-Set-up-configuration-policies

  • tg
    tg Member Posts: 7 ✭
    edited April 26

    Hi,

    the Update I was talking about was installed on 3rd of January 24.

    So if you are using the WUA API to connect to clients how come this information ist not transferred into Atera Patch view? This is not really making sense to me. If I cannot be 100% certain that Atera is showing the correct patch status on my machines your Software is not much of any use to me. Or do I miss something?

    p.s I am not interested in deploying patches throug Atera. We have a differnent solution for that purpose

  • dragos.t
    dragos.t Internal, Support Moderator Posts: 51 admin

    Hello @tg,

    Can you let me know if the KB that you mentioned was installed using Atera or was it installed using the Local windows updates module?

  • tg
    tg Member Posts: 7 ✭
    https://community.atera.com/discussion/comment/2288#Comment_2288

    Hi, the patch was installed before I started testing Atera

  • dragos.t
    dragos.t Internal, Support Moderator Posts: 51 admin

    Hello,

    The installed patches module within Atera will show only patches installed through the Atera patch management module. Patches that were installed locally will not appear in the Installed patches section.
    You can also use this script to double-check if a patch should appear in installed patches.

    This script queries WUA API and shows installed and available patches.
    $Session = New-Object -ComObject "Microsoft.Update.Session"
    $Searcher = $Session.CreateUpdateSearcher()
    $SearchResult = $searcher.Search("IsInstalled=1 and IsHidden=0")
    $SearchResult.updates | Select-Object title

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