Microsoft released their Advance Notification Bulletin yesterday. The September 12th patch cycle will include three security updates: two for Windows and one for Office. The Office patch is rated as critical and is most likely related to the recent Word 2000 vulnerability.

Just a reminder: Next month's cycle is the start of the fourth quarter when Microsoft plans to push Internet Explorer 7 as an automatic update. There's a toolkit for blocking the IE7 update - system administrators will want this until they can test for their production environments.

In other patch news: Microsoft released a patch outside of the regular monthly cycle. It happens to involve their DRM. There is an interesting take on the issue by Bruce Schneier at Wired News.