Busy Patch Tuesday sees 16 Microsoft fixes coincide with Adobe security update release

IT administrators will find their hands full this month with Microsoft planning 16 security updates to fix 34 vulnerabilities on the same day as security updates from Adobe.

Nine of Microsoft's updates in the firm's Patch Tuesday security update on 14 June are rated as critical, with the remaining seven rated as important, according to an advance notification bulletin.

All versions of Microsoft Windows are affected, plus Silverlight, the .NET framework and SQL on the server side. All versions of Excel in Microsoft Office will receive an update on both Windows and Mac OS X platforms, including even the most recent releases from 2010 and 2011. Internet Explorer is covered by two bulletins that update version 6, 7, 8 and the newest version 9 as well.

Adobe will also publish an update to its Adobe Reader and Acrobat products to address critical vulnerabilities, just a week after Oracle released 17 security updates of Java SE.

The Adobe patches will fix bugs in Adobe Reader and Acrobat X as well as versions 9.4.3 and earlier for both Windows and Mac OS X, according to a pre-notification Security Advisory issued on 9 June.

"All in all, a big update and system administrators will need to plan closely as both workstations and servers are affected by the critical bulletins. In addition applications such as Excel, Adobe Reader and Java will have to be taken into account this month," says Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer at Qualys.

Administrators will have to closely plan how they will test and deploy all these updates, Wolfgang Kandek says.