Problem: Microsoft issues security and other updates before or during your Windows 7 deployment. By the time you roll out the OS, it's behind the times (update-wise).

Solution: Windows Server Update Services, or WSUS, which lets you manage the distribution of such software updates during and after the Light Touch Installation deployment process.

Author Mitch Tulloch explains how in part 28 (!) of his exhaustive series on Deploying Windows 7. Here's an excerpt from the section on using WSUS in build vs. production environments:

You should use WSUS in both of your MDT deployment environments: build and production. Your build environment is the isolated lab where you deploy and capture images of your master (reference) computers and then test deploying the captured images to all the different types of PCs present in your production environment. Using WSUS in your build environment enables your master images to be patched up to the date of creation of the image. If you don't patch your master images like this, your production deployments will take longer to perform since all available updates will need to be applied to them during deployment.

Tulloch goes on to provide detailed, step-by-step instructions on installing WSUS, then shows how to synchronize it and configure MDT to use it. The guide is as thorough as any book chapter (not surprising given that Tulloch has authored two dozen actual books).

If you haven't already bookmarked the Deploying Windows 7 series, now's the time. There's just one article to go--adding Windows Deployment Services--until Tulloch finishes what is arguably the most comprehensive Windows 7 deployment guide on the Web today.