More info in advance of Patch Tuesday

Microsoft has stated its intention to provide users, especially administrators, with increased information about upcoming updates in its Advance Notification Service (ANS). Starting in June, information will be provided about how crucial each planned update is, what the effects will be, and so forth instead of merely announcing the maximum category of all updates by product group. Up to now, announcements along the lines of "at least one of the planned Windows updates is critical" (which is almost always the case) did not give administrators a realistic indication of their probable workload. After all, the remaining eight might have been unimportant, or critical and therefor also requiring immediate attention.

Furthermore, advance notification information will be provided under the URL for the subsequent overview; on June 7, the link would therefore be http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/ms07-jun.mspx. Finally, the bulletins have themselves been revised. In particular, information that is important for work is to be moved up to the top. To allow comparison, Microsoft has published an old IE advisory in the new look.

See also:

• ANS and Security Bulletin Updates, Mark Miller of Microsoft's Security Response Center

(mba)