We all learned the hard way how important patching vulnerabilities are when a major data breach occurred during 2017 that exposed the personal information of 80% of U.S. adults that was reportedly avoidable with a patch.

The biggest news in 2018 about patching is that to respond to the Spectre and Meltdown flaws [view related post], and a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Office, Microsoft issued 14 security updates this week.

It is being reported that computers using AMD chips are having difficulty pushing the patch issued by Microsoft and Microsoft has stated that it is suspending the patches for computers running AMD chips as they are having difficulty rebooting following the fix. Microsoft is presently working with AMD to find a suitable update. So if you have a computer using an AMD chipset, you will have to wait for a patch to be issued in the near future.

For the rest of us, the Microsoft patches issued this week (as well as all security updates received from manufacturers) are extremely important and following the recommendation of Microsoft and other manufacturers in pushing their patches is something to consider.