I fixed myself some Earl Grey yesterday (Tue) morning thinking (despite the hints in the advance notice e-mails last week), "Ah. It's 2008 and the first patches from Microsoft are on their way. I'm glad those mega-worms of 2006 are behind us. We are finally free from the anonymous network vector."

But, as I carefully looked over the January patch list and gazed in awe and fear of MS08-001, I wondered what to make of Microsoft's claim of enhanced security in Vista (supposedly built from the ground up) and pondered what real changes were made when they took time off and scoped out the code of XP. What of Writing Secure Code? It's 2008 and we're still susceptible to PING attacks?! (Granted, that one will just make your system unusable rather than give the malcontents full access to it)

This remote, anonymous (potential) exploit should turn many heads in corporate America. It's time for executives and IT staff to seriously consider getting rid of the monoculture of Microsoft. You could at least split the difference and run half OS X and half Windows (50% of your staff could get work done in a crisis, either way).

This initial patch of the year will also give pause to 2000->XP and 2000->Vista migrations (or it should, anyway) since you wouldn't have needed to worry if your organization happened to still be on the old, clunky OS. Just what Microsoft and soon-to-be-outsourced IT teams needed.

And, all this happens just when you were beginning to think you had a handle on at least one part of desktop security.

Keep those signatures updated on your firewalls & IDS system, maintain a watchful eye on your alert consoles and, most of all, patch those systems (including all those virtual machines you have such tight control over).