Microsoft Patch Tuesday advance notes will no longer be made public

Microsoft announced it's making changes to the role of its Advance Notification Service (ANS). The biggest change perhaps is that the software giant will no longer publish advance security update information on its public website, from now on these details will exclusively be shared with paid Premier support contracts and organizations "involved in the firm's security programs".

Speaking to ZD Net, a Microsoft spokesperson advised enthusiasts to use the company's myBulletins service, which are bulletin reports tailored to specific products that users have installed. Microsoft claims ANS was always optimized for large organizations and explains they're evolving the service as the vast majority of customers don't use the it and just wait for Patch Tuesday or take no action.

Microsoft created ANS more than 10 years ago as part of Patch Tuesday (which Microsoft execs these days prefer to call "Update Tuesday"). The idea was to "broadly communicate in advance about the security updates being released for Microsoft products and services each month," officials said in a January 8 blog post outlining the coming changes.

ANS information has been released to customers shortly ahead of Patch Tuesday each month via a Microsoft blog post and Web page.

Microsoft officials are attributing the more restricted availability of the ANS information to changes in how users want and need to get their security warnings.

Source: ZD Net