As much of the workforce in the United States coasts through the rest of the day looking forward to an extended weekend to grill hot dogs and drink beer—I mean, celebrate the nation’s independence—Microsoft released its advance notification for next week’s Patch Tuesday. The six security bulletins include two ranked Critical, three Important, and one listed merely as Moderate.

Six security bulletins is fewer than usual—with 106 security bulletins in 2013, the average has been just under nine security bulletins per month. But it’s still enough to keep IT admins busy.

One of the two Critical security bulletins is related to Internet Explorer. It is most likely a new cumulative update patch. Ross Barrett, senior manager of security engineering at Rapid7, said, “It will be interesting to see just how many CVEs are in this round after the 59 patched in MS14-035. Rather than 59 being the new normal, I expect this round will return to the 8-12 CVEs addressed per IE patch standard.”

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