Patch Tuesday could become a week-long affair for IT administrators charged with installing more than a dozen patches to lock down more than 30 serious vulnerabilities.
As eSecurity Planet reports, the fixes represent one of the largest monthly security tune-ups in company history.
Microsoft sent out an advance notification last Thursday warning staff with responsibilities for deploying fixes of the busy week ahead. None of the flaws fixed in Tuesday’s patches have been exploited in the wild so far.
Microsoft issued one of its largest collections of security fixes ever on Tuesday, releasing a total of 14 patches that secure 34 vulnerabilities, most primarily in Windows, but also a couple in the Office productivity applications.
The release, which was part of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Patch Tuesday event for August, includes eight “critical” patches and six “important” patches, according to a Microsoft statement. Each patch can, and often does, include fixes for multiple security flaws.
In Microsoft parlance, “critical” is the highest tier and most dangerous in the company’s four-tier threat rating system, while “important” is the second-most hazardous.