November 5, 2025
Security Updates vs. Security Patches — What's the Difference?
In the digital world, it is essential to keep your systems up to date at all times. This often raises the question: What is the difference between security updates and security patches? Both are critical to the integrity and security of your software, but they serve different roles.
Security patches are specific updates developed to address identified security gaps and vulnerabilities in software, operating systems, or applications. Software manufacturers use these patches to correct errors in operating systems and programs. Vulnerabilities can be exploited by attackers to gain unauthorized access to a system or cause direct damage. Security patches are therefore highly urgent and should be installed as soon as possible to minimize the risk of attacks.
Normal security updates, often simply referred to as updates or feature enhancement updates, are intended to improve the performance, features, or user experience of software and operating systems. These updates often include bug fixes, performance improvements, new features, or user interface changes. Unlike security patches, normal updates aren't urgent. Users or administrators can decide for themselves when to install these updates. Quarterly or half-yearly maintenance intervals are often completely sufficient for such updates.
While security updates improve software functionality and performance, security patches are designed to address identified security risks and protect systems from potential attacks. A security patch addresses specific vulnerabilities and vulnerabilities that are often caused by a CVE number (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) can be categorized. The higher the CVE number, the more critical the problem. If a vulnerability has a CVE number greater than 7, quick action is required, as such vulnerabilities can pose significant risks.
It's important that customers understand when they're running a function-enhancing update and when a security patch is urgently needed. While it is less critical to act immediately with normal updates, security patches are essential to protect your systems. When taking out Baobab cyber insurance, several cyber security measures are automatically integrated. This includes, among other things, a weekly risk scan. This is used to identify critical security gaps that require immediate closure of the security gap.
Make sure your cyber security plan includes both the regular installation of security patches and the planning and implementation of normal updates. This not only keeps your systems secure, but also powerful and user-friendly. In our Partner network You will find numerous providers who carry out updates for you automatically, such as SimpleBackups.
