Like clockwork, Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday has gone live. This month Microsoft seems to be focusing on Office and their Server Software, with the Windows updates posing only a moderate risk.
- Word and the Word Viewer
- Works 9
- SQL Server
- Windows (all current versions except Windows 8)
- Sharepoint Server
- Communicator & Lync
- InfoPath
- Groove
- Fast Search Server
- Office Web Apps
They only rate the Word update as Critical, and the rest as important. If you’d like more information about these alerts before we release our detailed alerts, check out Microsoft’s summary post for October.
Usually, I tend to recommend you patch Windows (and related products like Internet Explorer) first, since all your users have them, and security flaws in popular products pose a high risk. However, in this case the Windows updates seem the least worrisome of the bunch. Today, I recommend you apply the Office, and related Server Software updates first, the SQL Server update second, and save the Windows updates for last. Of course, I still recommend you test the updates before deploying them; especially the server ones.
We’ll share more details about Microsoft’s bulletins in three upcoming alerts, posted throughout the day. Stay tuned. — Corey Nachreiner, CISSP (@SecAdept)