Trying to figure out how many security fixes Microsoft will issue in a given month is more a roll of the dice than an exact science. The number of fixes the company releases monthly as part of its Patch Tuesday download of fixes is always going to be a moving target since it’s mainly a function of what vulnerabilities have surfaced from new research and testing or attacks by evildoers.
But Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) tries to give IT, security personnel and other interested parties as much notice as possible so they can prepare. For example, this week the company issued its standard advance notice of how many patches to expect as part of Patch Tuesday, as well as a description of each vulnerability.
For example, among the security vulnerabilities being patched on Tuesday is a fix for a critical graphics rendering flaw in Windows — a zero-day vulnerability that Microsoft warned customers was loose on the Web in early January.
eSecurity Planet has a complete report on Microsoft’s advance notification of this month’s Patch Tuesday which includes 12 security patches in total, three of them rated critical.
