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A current Reuters article reports that Microsoft announced today that it has devised software patches for five separate "critical" security holes in a wide range of Microsoft applications. The flaws addressed by the patches are serious, in that a malicious hacker could gain control of the user's computer and run secret programs.

Stephen Toulouse, a security program manager, said that Microsoft was "trying to move from patch development to patch deployment," but whether the patches are downloaded and installed is still in the hands of invididual Windows users and IT managers. The way Microsoft is "moving from patch development to patch deployment" is to make more of an effort publicize the patches.

It occurs to us that Microsoft is pretty much up against the wall on this issue. They can't send patches as email attachments,because Windows email attachments are already bad news. They can't rely on simple email notification, either, because recent email worms have disguised the messages they generate as emails from Microsoft (the people most likely to install the patches are least likely to open messages from a Microsoft email domain).

So how can they move to "patch deployment"? We think the real objective here is to keep everybody on board until a more secure Windows replacement is ready to go. The real question is, who can afford to wait that long?