First Microsoft Patch Tuesday of the year is quiet

It is a quite Patch Tuesday next week, as Microsoft is only releasing one "critical" security patch on 8 January, its first of the year.

As part of its monthly scheduled security patching cycle, Redmond will release one critical patch and one "important" patch - both for the Windows OS.

The critical patch is designed to prevent a remote code execution vulnerability in both client and server versions of Windows.

The important patch prevents a local privilege escalation flaw in the OS on both clients and servers.

A patch is deemed as critical when no user interaction is needed to open systems up to reported flaws.

The Microsoft security bulletin for January is available online.