October 2011 Patch Tuesday Preview

Next week’s October Patch Tuesday looks to be a light to medium sized release, with eight bulletins, two of which are critical. Top priority should be given to the remote code execution patch for all versions of Internet Explorer (including 9, the most modern version of IE on Windows 7). The other critical higher priority remote code execution patch affects the Microsoft .NET Framework and Microsoft Silverlight.

The remaining six bulletins are for Windows itself and a number of less pervasive Microsoft technologies, such as Forefront and the Host Integration server. They are all rated as important and not all of them apply to all configurations. IT administrators will have to evaluate to what degree they affect their networks, servers and workstations.