The Trusted system supports two types of online updates: normal updates and smart updates. All releases of the Trusted system provide normal updates. 3.4 and later support smart updates. Updates allow the application to be modified while the process is running. Specifically, an online update involves making changes to the currently running application, loading those changes into the system, and then having the system switch to the updated application without interrupting (shutting down) the process. While both types of online updates perform essentially the same function, smart updates allow applications to be modified in a variety of ways that normal updates do not.

Smart updates must be explicitly enabled for each project. The intelligent update manager must be aware of the specific version of the application running in the controller. Every time an application is compiled, the Intelligent Update Manager uses its knowledge of the application running in the controller to create the intelligent update recipe. This recipe contains the signature of the application running in the target as well as information about how to perform specific mappings to the variable and function block instance data. It is a recipe that allows variable values and function block instance data to be preserved in online updates.