Today’s Advance Notification

Hey folks – Mike Reavey here.  Next Tuesday is the 2nd Tuesday of the Month and I wanted to outline what bulletins we expect to release.  At the moment we have 6 security bulletins planned for release, the highest severity rating of these is Critical.  We’re also continuing to release our Malicious Software Removal tool with updates for additional malware families.  Finally, we have one non-security release that will be High-Priority on Microsoft and Windows Update.  This non-security release is important for stability reasons, but is not directly related to the security releases for this month.   

Hopefully this gives you a quick insight into what to expect next Tuesday.  If you haven’t already, I encourage you to start playing with and using Microsoft Update.  Microsoft Update provides updates to more than just Windows.  This includes Office, SQL, Exchange, etc.  So, while this month all the security updates are in Windows, Microsoft Update will provide you with fixes for past and future updates across these other products as well.   

Oh, I’d also like to say thanks to the many customers, security researchers, and security vendors I had a chance to meet while at Blackhat/DefCon in Las Vegas.  It was a great event, and I had a great time meeting some of the folks we work with day-in and day-out through secure@microsoft.com.  I am a still a little tired from Blackhat, but recovering nicely.  That reminds me, when I mentioned to somebody on my team that I was trying to get my sleep-cycle back on track as a result of Blackhat they said, “Isn’t Las Vegas in the same timezone?”  I guess technically it is….but it sure does feel like I was on another planet. 

-Mike