Microsoft won't release Advanced Security Notifications for free anymore
From this month forward, Microsoft will no longer release free Advanced Security Notifications before patches are made available on Patch Tuesday, the second Tuesday of the month.
The company's Advanced Notification Service informed customers about security updates in advanced so that customers could get a better understanding of affected products.
Microsoft announced yesterday that it made the decision to discontinue the free publication of the information. Instead, the company decided to only make the information available to Premier customers and organizations involved in the company's security programs.
Advanced notifications won't be made available on the Microsoft Security Response Center blog anymore and not be published publicly before the release of the actual security bulletin.
The reason for the change, according to MSRC Senior Director Chris Betz, is that many customers don't use or require the information anymore due to "optimized testing and deployment methodologies".
According to him, most customers wait for Update Tuesday before they take action or don't take any action at all and just let the updates be installed automatically.
Customers are "turning to Microsoft Update", tools like "Windows Server Update Service" or cloud-based systems which are updated automatically.
End-users who are not Premier customers or organizations involved with select Microsoft security programs won't be able to access security information in advanced anymore.
While Microsoft suggests to use the recently introduced myBulletins service, it is not offering those information at all.
Instead, it is providing Microsoft customers with options to look up information about published security bulletins and advisories only.
While this can be useful to customers, it won't be useful to customers who used the information published by the Advanced Notification Service.
Microsoft has not released Advanced Notifications for security bulletins that it plans to release in January 2015.
The end of free Advanced Security Notifications is not the only update-related change that Microsoft introduced in recent time.
The company discontinued the deployment priority matrix for instance and replaced it with the new Exploitability Index which sorts bulletins from top to bottom instead of groups.
Now You: Did you use the Advanced Notification Service?
I’ve never used The Advanced Notification Service directly, but I guess I’ve read with interest pages on websites proposing a resume of the advanced notifications. No more than that for the simple user I am.
Well I used it to write part of the patch day review article in advance which I can’t do any longer now. Means, the article will be published later than before ;)
I didn’t use it directly too. Because of your great reviews many of us don’t have to. Thanks Martin.
‘The reason for the change, according to MSRC Senior Director Chris Betz, is that many customers don’t use or require the information anymore due to “optimized testing and deployment methodologies”.’
That’s funny regarding the number of updates that had to be revoked in the last months.=)
This is ridiculous act of Microsoft. All customers pay for the OS and they don’t help them secure regardless of the usage. If the OS is free, then this can be free or paid service/feature. However, it is not.
It is their[MS] basic responsibility. Also, MS is trying to hide their faults with the OS and their updates until it gets patched. They[MS] want users to search and wait for long time to know what was the issue and why it is happening and to fix/block the task or setting.
This is the worst act next to removal of Service Packs by MS from both developer and consumer point of view.
Stupid move by Microsoft.
Tired of M$ and their crap! I have moved over to Linux and loving it.
M$ are slowly going down the gurgler. Customer service, what’s that? …….
So what,they’re only notifications.You’d think MS were actually charging for the updates judging by the inane furore from some on here.
I really do not care. Automatic updates is turned off on all my machines and has been for years. I only install updates when no uproar ensues following Patch Tuesday.
My thoughts? To Microsoft, “bite me”. Open source is wonderful, and we can learn to survive sans MS.
In spite of Microsoft’s efforts to reconfigure the company, and the image that they project to the public, they persist is performing actions that remind us that throwing money at them is first and foremost in the corporate mind.