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Microsoft (News - Alert) has just released at least 14 patches for email hosting solution Exchange, SQL Server, Windows and Office. The company will also release fixes for Internet Explorer for the third consecutive month.

The updates to Exchange and SQL Server hold particular importance to enterprise IT, according to an article featured in Computerworld. Exchange provides email hosting services for many companies, while SQL Server is the backbone of many corporate processes including providing business intelligence, delivering up-to-the-minute financial information and powering websites for employees.

Security personnel welcome the patches and professionals focused on operations are concerned about uptime.

“Thank goodness SharePoint's not included,” said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, in a statement. “But Microsoft is hitting two out of three in just one month.”

The most important update, according to Lumension Security and Forensic Analyst Paul Henry, is the ActiveX update that will re-patch a leaky patch in SQL Server. Microsoft released news of the ActiveX update in Bulletin 4.

“[Bulletin 4] addresses an ActiveX component that's redistributed in many places in Windows,” Henry wrote in an e-mail last week. “It's an issue that was previously patched and this patch cleans up the previous patch.”

Microsoft also plans to update Internet Explorer on a monthly basis instead of a bi-monthly basis going forward. The company stated that it had “increased its Internet Explorer resources to the point where it will be able to release an update during any month.”

Alex Horan, a senior product manager with CORE security, added that the patches fixed what he called a “hacker’s playground.”

On July 24, Microsoft released a bulletin warning of critical gaps that had been found in code licensed from Oracle (News - Alert). The breaches could have given hackers’ access to Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010.

Oracle reportedly repaired over 90 flaws in its code libraries as part of a massive update on July 17.Along with addressing problems with Exchange and SQL Server, the patches released by Microsoft will correct vulnerabilities in Windows, Visual Basic and Office.

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