Critical Patch Released

In a perfect world, computers would always work the first time, every time. There wouldn't be bugs, viruses, crashes, hardware failure, or evil hackers out on the internet. But we don't live in a perfect world. In the world in which we live, we see all of these things on a daily basis.

One of the things that we've come to accept in our field is the monthly set of patches from Microsoft. That's right... Microsoft unveils new patches for us on the second Tuesday of each month. This is normally nothing to get excited about as it's a monthly occurrence. All of our maintenance customers have this covered for their servers. We log in during off-hours, install patches, reboot (if necessary) and move on to the next server. For those customers with special timing needs, we work with you for a convenient time to get this all taken care of.

If you have desktop support in your maintenance contract, we are in the process of rolling out a new set of "toys" to get your desktops all updated and patched automatically. Not under a maintenance contract? Please feel free to call our office to ask about pricing, features, and support levels available to your business.

This is what happens under normal circumstances... Then there's what has JUST happened. On Thursday, October 23rd, Microsoft released a single out-of-band security update. The update is numbered MS08-067 (KB 958644). It's a vulnerability in a part of windows that EVERY Windows installation uses. And it's vulnerable in EVERY version of Windows (Vista and Server08 are slightly protected... slightly).

The last 3 times Microsoft released one of these out-of-bound patches, nasty viruses came along soon thereafter. Blaster CRIPPLED networks in 2003. Sasser hit hard in 2004. Zotob hit hard in 2005. Because of this threat, it is important that computers are patched. If you are behind a firewall, you are protected from this threat... until someone comes along and connects a laptop to the network (wired or wireless). All it takes is one infected laptop to begin infecting your environment. I've seen it happen to the smallest of companies and the largest of corporations.

What does all of this mean to you? It means that as a Core3 supported customer, we're on top of this for you. This is part of what you pay for when you sign up for a maintenance contract. It's inconvenient to have to patch servers once a month, but this inconvenience now can prevent you hours or days of downtime and huge expenditures as you recover from one of these types of nasty infections. Your data stays safe. Your business stays safe.

We will be contacting all of our maintenance customers every month before MS Patch Day (that's the second Tuesday of the month) to coordinate the installation of these patches on your server. That way, you'll know what we're up to. It will also ensure that you do not suddenly wonder "Why is my server down? This seems to always happen on Tuesday nights!"

These Microsoft patches have become a fact of life for us in the IT field. It's important that they're installed in a timely fashion to protect the investment you've made into your company's IT infrastructure. Rest assured that the staff at Core3 is on the job; we're working to protect your investment and your data.

Posted October 24, 2008 | Read all posts by Jeff Archambeau