Biggest Security Update Ever On Microsoft Patch Tuesday

Next week brings the biggest Patch Tuesday update ever as Microsoft prepares a total of 16 security bulletins

Microsoft is poised to break its record for the most Patch Tuesday security bulletins ever. This is the second time in two months that Microsoft has broken its own patching record.

On Tuesday, the company is set to release 16 security bulletins to cover a total of 49 vulnerabilities spread across Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office and the .NET framework.

A Busy Month For IT Administrators

This is two more than were issued in the August Patch Tuesday when the company set the current record with a release of 14 bulletins. That update fixed 34 security holes across a similar number of products.

This time around, four of the bulletins are rated ‘critical’, while 10 are ranked as ‘important’, and two others are considered ‘moderate’. All of the critical bulletins address issues that could be exploited by hackers or malware to permit remote code execution.

It all means more misery for IT departments. In addition to these upcoming fixes, administrators will also need to look at deploying the out-of-band bulletin released by Microsoft last week, as well as Adobe Systems’ recent updates – if they have not done so already, said Jason Miller, data and security team leader at Shavlik Technologies.

“This month will be particularly challenging for administrators as most patch scenarios will hit every machine on a network,” Miller said.

These latest fixes bring Microsoft’s running total for security bulletins to 86 so far this year.