Microsoft prepares for 'calm' Patch Tuesday

Organisations hould still be vigiliant.....

IT administrators can breathe a little easier as Microsoft issues a light load for next week with only two fixes, one “critical” and the other “important”. However, organizations should still be vigilant in patching the critical one immediately as Windows Bulletin 1 addresses a vulnerability in Windows XML Core Services, the foundation for this pervasive technology used throughout businesses today to format and manipulate data. Lumension Security urges IT administrators to carefully look at the critical bulletin, which if not addressed immediately could compromise the integrity of a company’s sensitive information. In addition, this vulnerability impacts a broad range of Microsoft platforms.



While the Windows Bulletin 2 might be ranked important in terms of severity, we will be looking at this closely as it addresses a remote code execution vulnerability. With only two bulletins next week, IT administrators should be able to efficiently and effectively deploy using best practices.



While the patch load from MS is light there have been multiple separate patch releases recently from Adobe for multiple critical vulnerabilities and yet another set of patches from Apple. Furthermore, the Microsoft patch addresses a “wormable” vulnerability that is being exploited in limited attacks. The higher patch load from widely distributed software other then Microsoft speaks volumes for the need for comprehensive patch management across multiple vendors and platforms.



This will be the second month that the security giant will be using the Exploitability Index, a new Microsoft initiative aimed at attempting predictions on whether exploit code will be released . It will be interesting to see how Microsoft applies that index to these particular vulnerabilities.

By Ip_andrewclarkef on Friday Nov 7