Microsoft has released out-of-band updates for Windows shortly after it released the cumulative security updates for Windows earlier this week.
These new updates are available for Windows 11, version 23H2 and 22H2, as well as several Enterprise and server versions of Windows.
Good to know: out-of-band updates are usually released to fix pressing issues. Most need to be downloaded and installed manually, as the issue may not affect all installations.
The updates affect a logon auditing issue in Windows. Since logon auditing is usually not configured on home systems or unmanaged systems, it is an issue that affects Enterprise devices mostly.
Here is Microsoft’s description of the issue:
It addresses a known issue where Audit Logon/Logoff events in the local policy of the Active Directory Group Policy might not show as enabled on the device even if they are enabled and working as expected. This can be observed in the Local Group Policy Editor or Local Security Policy, where local audit policies show the “Audit logon events” policy with Security Setting of “No auditing”.
To sum it up: this is a reporting issue only that does not impact functionality.
The patch can be installed on affected systems to resolve the issue. The vast majority of home users does not need the patch.
Here are the links to the support articles:
- Windows 10, version 23H2 and 22H2: KB5058919
- Windows Server 2022: KB5058920
- Windows 10, version 20H2, and Windows Server, version 20H2: KB505892
- Windows 10, version 1809 and Windows Server, version 1909: KB5058922
Click on the link to the Microsoft Update Catalog website on the linked support websites to download the patch. It needs to be installed manually after download. This is usually done by double-clicking on the downloaded patch file and following the instructions that appear on screen.