[This was originally published on the OSVDB blog.]
A while back, Microsoft announced they were moving to release patches on the second Tuesday of each month, lovingly called Patch Tuesday. Soon after, Oracle announced that they too would be moving to scheduled releases of patches on the Tuesday closest to the 15th day of January, April, July and October. Now, Cisco has announced they are moving to scheduled patches on the fourth Wednesday of the month in March and September of each calendar year.
In the attempt to make life easier on administrators and help avoid installing patches every few days, these scheduled releases are now causing organizations to enjoy life between monster patches.
Mar 11 – Microsoft
Mar 26 – Cisco
Apr 8 – Microsoft
Apr 15 – Oracle
May 13 – Microsoft
June 10 – Microsoft
July 8 – Microsoft
July 15 – Oracle
August 12 – Microsoft
September 9 – Microsoft
September 24 – Cisco
October 14 – Microsoft, Oracle
November 11 – Microsoft
December 9 – Microsoft
As you can see, October 14 promises to be a lot of fun for companies running Oracle products on Microsoft systems. While the scheduled dates look safe, I can’t wait until we see the ”perfect storm” of vendor patches.