Every change in software code base is at risk. This risk is high or low depedending on the maintenability of your code, its simplicity and the knowledge of it by developers.
What about 3rd party?
Most of the development team are now reusing tones of open source 3rd parties. This is not a problem in itself, if you manage the impact on the software…but it’s at least more risky than on you own code base.
Usually, the source of the problem is a misunderstanding in the usage of an API or a class. Don’t blame on dev team, its really tricky in some cases to detect such problems. Trying to guess before the change if a new version will be compatible is simply unfeasable. That being said, there is only 1 choice: test your application. Of course if you have tons of automated tests…that will be much easier.
I defenitely think that automates test is getting more and more important. The usage of 3rd parties which is grown every year, is another clue.
Apr 29