Microsoft Prepping Record Breaking Patch

If you have the misfortune of living in an area where dial-up is still the only option, you have our condolences. Not just because dial-up sucks, but also because you're not going to doing much of anything online next Tuesday other than downloading security updates. Microsoft is putting together its biggest patch ever, a record 16 security updates to address 49 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, and Sharepoint.

Out of the 16 updates, Microsoft has labeled 4 of them as "Critical," 10 of them "Important," and 2 of them "Moderate." Most of the updates address threats related to Remote Code Execution, and several of them require a restart.


"I have a theory about the large October updates," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle Security. "It's the year-end financial and retail push by most companies, which go into lockdown mode the last two months of the year, when they don't update their systems."

Despite the record breaking nature of this upcoming Patch Tuesday, this falls in line with Microsoft's update strategy. Larger updates typically land on even-numbered months as Redmond has taken to alternating big and small updates every month.