Today is the second patch Tuesday for the month of March. What is Patch Tuesday and why is it important? Well, in October of 2003, Microsoft decided that patches would be released on the second (and if necessary the fourth) Tuesday of each month. This allowed IT departments to plan for and prepare for those critical security patches.
As of today, this month has seen 64 vulnerability fixes released, 17 of those which have been classified as Critical. Some of the programs that are affected include :
- Internet Explorer
- Microsoft Edge
- Microsoft Office
- Microsoft Windows (both servers and desktop versions)
- Adobe Flash
- Visual Studio
- Windows Hyper-V
- Skype
- Jet Database
Included in this group of patches is a zero-day vulnerability fix. What is a zero-day vulnerability? A bug that is found by an outside group instead of the programmers. The closer the vulnerability is to its discovery date, the less likely a fix will be available. This problem affects Windows 7 and Server 2008.
There are some very bad people in the world that are just dying to get into your computer…patching is a good way to keep them out. Do yourself (and your computer) a favor…circle the second Tuesday of each month and check for updates. If you are a business? Contact your IT department and make sure that you are protected.