The second Tuesday of each month has become known as Patch Tuesday, a day on which Microsoft releases security patches for their Windows operation systems. Since the release of Microsoft Update, patches for other software, like Office suites and SQL Server, are serviced on Patch Tuesday as well.

In some cases, a worm or vulnerability exploit is released a few days before Patch Tuesday, disallowing Microsoft the ability to fix the issue in time. With this knowledge, some malware creators wait until a few days before Patch Tuesday to release their malware programs so they could take advantage of the delay.

Patch, Security terms

  • How to update a Microsoft Windows computer.
  • Computer security help and support.