Security Response

Hello, welcome to this month’s blog on the Microsoft patch release. This is a smaller month—the vendor is releasing seven bulletins covering a total of eight vulnerabilities.

Only one of this month's issues is rated 'Critical' and it affects Windows Media. The remaining issues affect Windows, the kernel, and Microsoft’s Anti-Cross Site Scripting library.

As always, customers are advised to follow these security best practices:

• Install vendor patches as soon as they are available.
• Run all software with the least privileges required while still maintaining functionality.
• Avoid handling files from unknown or questionable sources.
• Never visit sites of unknown or questionable integrity.
• Block external access at the network perimeter to all key systems unless specific access is required.

Microsoft’s summary of the January releases can be found here:
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Hello, welcome to this month’s blog on the Microsoft patch release. This is an average month—the vendor is releasing 13 bulletins covering a total of 19 vulnerabilities.

Three of this month's issues are rated ‘Critical’ and they affect Media Player, Microsoft Time ActiveX control, and the public issue regarding TrueType fonts (currently being exploited by Duqu malware). The remaining issues affect Windows, the kernel, Internet Explorer, Active Directory, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Active Directory, Publisher, and Office.

As always, customers are advised to follow these security best practices:

• Install vendor patches as soon as they are available.
• Run all software with the least privileges required while still maintaining functionality.
• Avoid handling files from unknown or questionable sources.
• Never visit sites of unknown or questionable integrity.
• Block external access at the network perimeter...

Hello, welcome to this month’s blog on the Microsoft patch release. This is a small month—the vendor is releasing four bulletins covering a total of four vulnerabilities.

Only one of this month's issues is rated ‘Critical’ and it affects the Windows TCP/IP stack. It potentially can be exploited to completely compromise an affected computer. The remaining issues affect Active Directory, Windows Mail, and Windows kernel-mode drivers.

As always, customers are advised to follow these security best practices:

• Install vendor patches as soon as they are available.
• Run all software with the least privileges required while still maintaining functionality.
• Avoid handling files from unknown or questionable sources.
• Never visit sites of unknown or questionable integrity.
• Block external access at the network perimeter to all key systems unless specific access is required.

Microsoft’s...

Hello and welcome to this month’s blog on the Microsoft patch release. This is an average month — the vendor is releasing 8 bulletins covering a total of 23 vulnerabilities.

Nine of the issues are rated ‘Critical’ and they affect Internet Explorer, .NET, and Silverlight. The remaining issues are rated ‘Important’ and affect Windows, the kernel, Forefront Unified Access Gateway, and Host Integration Server. Of note this month: all Internet Explorer issues being patched are rated ‘Critical’.

As always, customers are advised to follow these security best practices:

• Install vendor patches as soon as they are available.
• Run all software with the least privileges required while still maintaining functionality.
• Avoid handling files from unknown or questionable sources.
• Never visit sites of unknown or questionable integrity.
• Block external access at the network perimeter to all...