It’s once again time for the monthly headache otherwise known as Patch Tuesday.

As you’re no doubt aware from my previous whining, Microsoft no longer publishes a bulletin for each update, and finding useful information in the Security Update Guide is awkward at best. It feels like Microsoft is trying to get everyone to just give up and enable auto-update. Of course with Windows 10 you no longer have a choice: you get updates when Microsoft wants you to have them. Which is one of the reasons I don’t use that particular O/S.

From my analysis of the Security Update Guide‘s entries for August 2017, it appears that we have thirty-nine updates, addressing fifty-three vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Edge, Windows, SharePoint, Adobe Flash Player, and SQL Server. Eighteen of the updates are flagged as Critical. Time to fire up Windows Update on all your Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 computers.

Adobe released updates for Flash and Reader today. The Reader update (Reader DC/Continuous: 2017.012.20093; Reader 2017: 2017.011.30059; Reader DC/Classic: 2015.006.30352) addresses sixty-seven vulnerabilities. The Flash update (version 26.0.0.151) addresses two vulnerabilities. Anyone still using Flash or Reader, especially as web browser plugins, should install the new versions as soon as possible.