Patching Season?

The holidays are coming with a large number of security updates releases from vendors.

So far this month we already have the following important updates:

Google Chrome version 8.0.552.215 was released on 2^nd December with 13 security fixes, 4 of them high severity level
Apple QuickTime version 7.6.9 is available from 7^th December. It contains 15 security fixes, 14 of them labeled as critical.
Mozilla has released yesterday Thunderbird versions 3.0.11/3.1.7 addressing 3 critical security issues and Firefox 3.5.16/3.6.13 with 11 security fixes, out of which 10 are critical or high severity level.

Oracle has released Java 6 update 23, but this is a non security update.

This week we had the biggest Microsoft patch Tuesday ever. 17 new security bulleting were released, 16 of them labeled as critical or important. This is an all time record from Microsoft. The following Microsoft products are affected:

Microsoft Windows
Internet Explorer
Microsoft Office
Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft Exchange

More details are available here.

Avi December 27, 2010 at 7:25 am

It’s great that Microsoft has been stepping up their game in terms of support for their products. It’s actually been quite a profitable year for Microsoft all around. However, the numbers mean nothing now that Apple has the largest lead it’s ever had against the Windows giant. With more people sporting OSX than ever before, Microsoft can’t afford to have another Vista on their hands anytime within the next bajillion years.
Sam Davis December 28, 2010 at 7:15 am

My company is also busiest coming up towards the holidays because we like rolling out support for our different systems and clients before offices close for the Christmas season. That, juggled alongside Christmas shopping makes for one stressed out IT department. It is funny to see that companies like Google, Apple, Mozilla and Microsoft don’t seem to be getting much sleep right before the holidays as well. I guess it’s the same all around the industry.
Cristian Florian January 13, 2011 at 10:24 am

@Avi
Actually until recently when you were talking about patch management you were talking in general about Microsoft. Now all big companies like Adobe, Apple, Oracle, Mozilla, Google, etc. are releasing a lot of security updates making patch management quite a hard and time consuming task.

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Patching Season?

About the Author: Cristian Florian

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