For those of you that may not be aware of this, Microsoft has released an out-of-band (OOB) update aimed at fixing vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Windows Defender. According to ZDNet.com, the IE update will have to be applied manually whereas Windows Defender will receive it automatically.
My takeaway from this article (found here) is whether this truly warranted Microsoft going out of their way to publish this separately and not as a part of Patch Tuesday. After all, Internet Explorer has an approximate market share of less than 2% worldwide as cited in the article but then again I wonder what percentage of those utilizing the legacy browser are machines currently being used by governments or other high level entities across the world…food for thought!