Big Windows Security Update This Week

Get your update engines running, because this week Microsoft released its biggest number of bug fixes on “Patch Tuesday”.  Updates are being pushed out for all versions of Windows as well as Office.

For Windows, 17 patches will fix a whopping 64 holes. These include nine critical patches and eight important. Of the critical patches, five of them have the highest “exploitability index” rating of 1, meaning that the risk of attack is high and the impact of being pwned is also high. This month’s update is a record-breaker in the number of holes fixes, beating last December’s update of 17 patches that fixed 40 holes.

This update also fixes a number of critical issues with all versions of Office, and also includes two new software updates: the Rootkit Evasion Prevention tool and Office File Validation.

If you don’t have your updates set to auto, then make sure you run the Microsoft Update program this week to get all these fixes, updates and patches. Further info on this month’s updates is at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms11-apr.mspx