It is safe from Google updates. Google loves natural link building practices. Whether it is submitting to directories, article directories, blog commenting but all these activities should have manual work and links should come in slow & natural manner over a period of time.
Directory links are 100% safe from penguin/panda updates because most of links comes in slow manner. So it seems natural to Google coming slow links.
And now it is official from Google that They will no longer announce name of their updates. So It is worse practice to build links on basis of a Google update. It is advisable to do some genuine link building practices which might help you really in business. Directory links will do this for your business.
