It's a brand new year, and this time always brings with it a brand new way of looking at Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday updates.

Okay, show of hands please. How many of you are still running Exchange 2007? Hmm, one, two, three, four…eight thousand and seven-okay, and that's just the right side of the auditorium.

It's a time of year when many office workers slack off a bit at their jobs, while other, seasonal occupations ramp on. In the IT world, it's pretty much business as usual.

Microsoft has been pummeling us with security updates for the past few months, and seemed to be stuck on the number 16 for a while there.

If you were hoping for a light load of patches this month, you're in the same boat as those folks who were hoping for a light rain in Houston last month.

Along with 14 patches, Microsoft introduced a new Security Update Guide web site, as the new location for information on security vulnerabilities.

Sysadmins are often pressured by pushy and arrogant users trying to break out of the boundaries of established policies.

Let's take a look at the details of some of this month's patches from major third party security vendors. The following applies as of the date of this writing, which is June 28.

It's September and business for sysadmins is back to normal, so we got a brand new batch of seven critical and seven important updates.

Google published several Chrome updates in November, addressing several security and stability issues, while other vendors had a more or less calm month.

October is the month that kicks off the holiday season, but for IT professionals the "update party" never stops, with Chrome bringing even 21 security fixes this month.

December is a busy time for most of us, what with the holidays, family matters, and the many tasks involved in wrapping up one year and preparing to embark on another.

It's hard to believe June is almost at an end and we are well into the hot Texas summer here at home. My week in beautiful Alaska at the beginning of the month is now only a cool (in both senses) memory.

MS16-063 (KB 3163649): This is the usual monthly cumulative update for Internet Explorer that applies to IE 9, 10 and 11 (all supported versions) on all supported versions of Windows.

IT pros who are looking for relief from the heavy patch loads we've seen recently will find August is a mixed bag. Firefox 48 is here now, along with a bunch of security updates from other vendors.

Autumn season brings falling leaves and a new set patches, with an unusually large security patch bunch coming from Apple, and a regular monthly number of patches from other vendors.

As I write this, the month of May is coming to an end and summer is just around the corner. Here in Texas, with temperatures already in the 80s, we feel as if it's already arrived.