This month’s Microsoft patches could lead to a hectic week for IT managers

This week could be ‘hectic’ with Microsoft offering a critical patch for Internet Explorer.
Alan Bentley, regional VP EMEA of Lumension, said even though there are only two critical patches being issued tomorrow, it could still be a hectic week as the most critical patch this month is the IE bulletin requiring a reboot of all XP and Vista machines in the organisation running IE 7.
Bentley said: “Large-scale reboots of all desktops can lead to disruption and productivity hits if not planned and coordinated appropriately. As organisations are looking at the IE 7 update, they should also look at the recently released critical update for the Firefox browser, more stealthy malware is being introduced to endpoints via browser exploits; therefore, critical browser updates need to be made a higher priority than ever before.”
Regarding the critical patch that will cover the vulnerability in the Exchange mail server software, he claimed that this has proven to be the easiest target for hackers to infiltrate, as if they are able to compromise an organisation’s Exchange Server, then they will be able to intercept every email coming and going, essentially making it open to every corporation across the globe.
Bentley said: “Given the proximity of the Exchange Server to external data entering the network, organisations will want to deploy this update immediately. However, critical email services are often subject to change control processes that could make an urgent deployment a complex matter.
“If this ends up being a web-facing vulnerability, then it will be highly critical to patch as IT professionals constantly have to make sure these types of systems are patched and secure while running efficiently at the same time. Although the Exchange vulnerability is critical, organisations will want to read the details carefully when the full patch comes out to see if there are any mitigating controls.”
He also claimed that organisations should consider the update for the SQL Server as critical, despite it only being named as ‘important’.