Microsoft has issued February’s plans for patches and the number of patches required has greatly increased.
Regional director of Lumension UK & Ireland, Matthew Walker, says: “After a light start to the year in terms of patching, Microsoft is issuing a bumper load for IT departments to tackle for February with 13 patches in all - five of which have a maximum security rating of critical.”
Lumension advise that IT departments make arrangements for patch management before 09 February. Walker says: “IT teams managing servers will definitely need to be on high alert this month and have proactive patching plans in place prior to Tuesday. They are facing critical patches for the three most common server platforms in Microsoft environments including: Windows Server 2003 with three critical vulnerabilities, Windows Server 2008 with two critical vulnerabilities and Windows 2008 R2 with two critical vulnerabilities.”
Concern has also been expressed regarding one particular patch that could cause a major pause in activity: Walker says:“Bulletin 6 appears to be the most disruptive as it is critical across all Microsoft platforms - both server and desktop/laptop. Microsoft indicates that a reboot is required, so this patch could impact the availability of key servers and impact the productivity of IT staff.”
One area that IT departments do not need to be a concerned about is Microsoft Office, Walker commented:
“There is some good news in that the Microsoft Office Suite doesn’t have any critical patches coming out, but overall, IT departments are facing the need to deploy a large number of patches to all Microsoft computers in the organisation with many forced reboot situations. Therefore, it will be imperative to plan ahead this month on how these patches should be deployed throughout their enterprises to minimise the possibility of widespread disruption.”