Fergie's Tech Blog

Microsoft Losing Security Cred: Unofficial 0-Day Patches Gain Corporate Support

John Leyden writes on The Register:

Organisations are deploying unofficial patches in the absence of officially sanctioned security fixes from vendors, a new survey suggests.

Around one in eight (13 per cent) customers quizzed by security vendor PatchLink deployed an unofficial third party patch when the zero-day Microsoft WMF (Windows Meta File) exploit was discovered in January.

Three quarters of the 300 IT managers and network administrators worldwide questioned believe that patch cycles, like Microsoft's patch Tuesday, have improved their overall security patch and vulnerability processes. Forty-two per cent quantified the improvement as reducing the time they spent on patching, while 18 per cent reckon they've been able to reduce the number of employees they assign to patching thanks to greater certainty in the timing of patch releases.

posted by Fergie @ 4/04/2006 08:52:00 AM