Time to Tweak Microsoft's Patch Tuesday?

It's been about six years since Microsoft set aside the second Tuesday of each month as the day to release security patches, and most IT administrators have come to appreciate a consistent schedule to plan around.

But every so often, zero-day vulnerabilities and attacks materialize outside the cycle, causing more than a little heartburn for Windows-based businesses.

In December, for example, Microsoft was forced to release an emergency, out-of-cycle patch for Internet Explorer (IE) to close a security hole that allowed attackers to infect more than 2 million machines. The malware allowed the bad guys to steal such personal data as passwords when the user visited one of at least 10,000 compromised websites.