According to Zero Day Initiative, Microsoft had a busy 2021, patching an impressive 887 CVE-assigned vulnerabilities. CVE-assigned means vulnerabilities that are identified, defined, and cataloged by the CVE Program. That means Microsoft has likely fixed far more than the 887 outlined in Zero Day Initiative’s report, but those aren’t tracked. Additionally, that number doesn’t include Chromium-based Edge.
While that number is large, it’s actually a 29% decrease over 2020. We’ll have to wait for 2022 to see what sorts of new bugs and vulnerabilities make their way to the surface and how many of them Microsoft will fix on Patch Tuesday (and through other emergency patches).
As far as the most recent Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released 67 security fixes. Of those, seven are critical issues and one is a zero-day flaw actively being exploited in the wild, so it’s definitely a set of updates you’ll want to download to make sure your PC is as secure as possible.
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