Microsoft is preparing to release its last major patch of the year this week, which will addressing 40 vulnerabilities found in Microsoft Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, SharePoint and Exchange.

“Of the 17, two bulletins are rated Critical, 14 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate,” explained Mike Reavey, Director at Microsoft's Security Response Centre.

The patch count for the year is now up to 106, which is more than Microsoft has released in previous years.

Reavey says this is due to vulnerability reports in Microsoft products increasing slightly and isn’t surprising given product life cycles, “Vulnerability research methodologies, on the other hand, change and improve constantly.”

He continued, “The percentage of vulnerabilities reported to us cooperatively continues to remain high at around 80%; in other words, for most vulnerabilities we're able to release a comprehensive security update before the issue is broadly known.

“At the end of the day, Microsoft's primary focus is to release reliable, high-quality updates to our customers. Feedback from customers indicate that this is the most important factor in minimising disruption and allowing them to deploy our updates quickly - even more important than the overall number of security updates.”

Read more about the update here.