You have an automated system for patching the operating systems of all your computers. All patches are supposedly current. Yet your automated vulnerability scanner has just reported vulnerabilities…

Automated patch deployment can fail silently due to errors, incomplete reboots, or misconfigured deployment targets, so manually inspecting a representative sample of systems confirms whether patches were actually applied. This provides the factual basis needed before deciding to rerun patching, escalate to incident response, or accept the findings.

Rerunning patching routines before verifying the actual system state is premature and may not address the root cause of why deployment failed in the first place.

Escalating to incident response is premature without first confirming whether the scanner findings reflect a real, unpatched vulnerability rather than a patch deployment failure.

Dismissing findings as false positives without investigation is irresponsible and could leave genuinely unpatched vulnerabilities exposed to exploitation.