June 2023: Proactive Patches and Upgrades

June 2023 reinforced the idea that security and stability come from rhythm. Adobe issued patches across supported lines (including 2.4.6-p1, 2.4.5-p3 and 2.4.4-p4) as part of APSB23-35. The standout item was a critical Stored XSS (CVE-2023-29297) alongside other fixes. Importantly, Adobe used this cycle to trickle down platform updates: official compatibility for Varnish 7.3 and RabbitMQ 3.11 arrived with 2.4.6-p1, giving cautious teams a way to modernise parts of the stack without a major version jump.

For many estates, June was when 2.4.6 became the default target for consolidation, thanks to its performance work and PHP 8.2 support. The message remained consistent: keep lower environments aligned with production, reduce configuration drift and you'll be faster when critical patches land.

How we recommend teams operate:

• Cadence: schedule a monthly maintenance window and stick to it; when the quarter's p-line lands, your teams already know the drill.
• Automation: build a lean smoke pack that validates checkout, payments, order placement, admin login and key GraphQL flows. Save exhaustive tests for after the emergency window.
• Representative data: refresh staging data and media so cache behaviour, indexes and search facets reflect production reality.
• KPIs: track mean time to patch and time to detect regressions; use them to argue for investment in test automation when needed.

June wasn't flashy, but it was consequential. The merchants who thrive are those that treat security and upgrades as steady, predictable practice rather than sporadic projects.