Over the past year, we've seen Microsoft make radical improvements in its browser stability and significant positive changes to its Windows update communication and telemetry strategies. And this month's Patch Tuesday release brings with it an incredibly light set of updates — maybe the fewest number of updates I have ever seen.
There are no zero-days, which is a great finish to 2023, though Windows gets three critical updates and Visual Studio will require immediate attention due to several re-releases of past critical application patches.
The team at Readiness has created a helpful infographic to outline the risks associated with each update in this last release of 2023. One note of caution: we have seen several potential updates to older patches (October/November) potentially coming down the release pipeline from Microsoft. It might be worth checking in during the upcoming holiday break to see whether there are any out-of-band patches for the Windows ecosystem.