After last month’s monsterous Patch Day, I’m happy to report Microsoft plans to give us a break next Tuesday. According to their Advanced Notification alert for July, they will release four security bulletins on Tuesday, July 12. The bulletins will cover 22 vulnerabilities affecting Windows and Office (likely Visio), and Microsoft only rates one of them as Critical.
Despite the light load, I still recommend you prepare to download, test, and deploy Microsoft’s updates as soon as you can on Tuesday–especially the Critical one. Critical updates often fix flaws that allow attackers to gain remote control of your computer, with little to no user interaction. Even Important updates can fix code execution flaws that require a bit more user interaction. In either case, we recommend you try and install Microsoft patches as quickly as possible.
I’ll know more about these bulletins on Tuesday, July 12, and will publish alerts about them here. — Corey Nachreiner, CISSP (@SecAdept)