System administrators can expect a relatively light Patch Tuesday next week with a total of nine bulletins, of which four have been flagged as critical. According to Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) advance notification released yesterday, this is lower than the 12 security bulletins in the same month last year. Affected software includes Internet Explorer, Windows Server 2003, Office, SharePoint and Silverlight.

Windows Server 2008 R2 is affected by the greatest number of bulletins, which is surprising given that server operating systems tend to have fewer bugs than desktop operating systems. Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle told eWeek: "That's kind of weird because newer OS versions are generally more secure."

Given that this month's Patch Tuesday falls on Valentine's Day, some administrators may find their plans for the evening ruined. Paul Henry, security and forensic analyst at Lumension, noted in an email message that the four critical bulletins would "most likely" require a restart--making it less likely to be an update that can be applied during office hours.

On the bright side, Henry observed that that makes two fairly light patching months in a row praised Microsoft's renewed efforts.

For more:
- check out this article at Computerworld
- check out this article at eWeek

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