Patch Tuesday Perfect Time To Review Patch Policy

Tomorrow's huge load of fixes coming from Microsoft provides a great opportunity to review your own patch policies. Starting with whether or not your company has a formal patch policy.Microsoft's record release of 14 security bulletins tomorrow, filled with critical fixes is likely to generate plenty of buzz.

You should pay almost as much attention to the buzz as you do to the patches.

Even ordinary Patch Tuesdays are important, as are patch releases from any company whose products you use. But it's just as important that you and all affected employees and their systems know what you're doing when patches are released -- and why you're doing them that way.

Which means you need a patch policy in place before you put the patches in place.

The first thing you should ask yourself is whether or not your company actually has a formal patch policy.

If not, now's the time. Put together a policy that addresses the following patch-related concerns:

1. Which systems and applications are most vulnerable?