January 2025 News and Updates

  • Verizon Outage – As I think everyone knows at this point, Verizon suffered a massive outage on Wednesday, 14 January 2026. I’ve seen a lot of chatter about what may have happened but the most popular explanation so far seems to be that Verizon laid off a large contingent of it’s senior IT folks and outsourced those roles. I doubt that we’ll ever know the full extent of what happened but I won’t really be surprised to find out that it’s that same one guy that deployed (or failed to deploy) that one patch without authorization and that one guy has been fired.
  • Fortinet Vulnerabilities – Fortinet wasted no time announcing significant vulnerabilities in it’s product line for 2026. In, I believe, every case, the vulnerabilities can be resolved by updating to the latest stable version of the impacted software. Additional details are available from Fortinet here.
  • Upcoming End of Life for Windows Server 2016 – We’re officially under two years before the Windows Server 2016 End of Life (EOL), currently scheduled for 25 January 2027. This may seem like a long way off but, in most cases, the upgrade from Windows Server 2016 will require not only additional software licenses but also Client Access Licenses (CALs) and hardware and extensive planning to transition older systems off of the current Windows Server 2016 platform.
  • FortiGate 60E End of Service – The FortiGate 60E firewall / UTM will be out of service on 29 December, 2026. Clients who currently have a FortiGate 60E will be able to renew their security services until December of 2025 but will not be able to renew next year. Our recommendation for those with FortiGate 60E devices currently deployed is to renew for this year and plan to replace it prior to the expiration next year. The current replacement is the FortiGate 60F but there has been chatter that the FortiGate 60G may be released this year.
  • Client Forms – In an effort to make requesting support easier for common tasks (onboarding and offboarding users, for example), we are launching a number of forms that clients can use to request support. Links to the forms are located at the top of our website under Client Forms.

Updates

MicrosoftMicrosoft released around 113 (or 114, depending on who you ask) in the first Patch Tuesday of 2026. This includes eight that are considered critical and, according to Crowdstrike, at least three zero days that are being actively exploited.

Microsoft releases regular updates the second Tuesday of each month, often referred to as ‘Patch Tuesday’. These updates are categorized as Low, Moderate, Important or Critical. Details on the categories are available here. The updates can include any supported Microsoft product from Windows to Office to Internet Explorer and server products like Exchange and SQL Server. If you have one or more of these products installed, especially if the update is listed as Important or Critical, it’s important that the updates are installed.

Additional details on this months Microsoft updates are available from SANS Internet Storm Center, Krebs, AskWoody.com and Crowdstrike.

Adobe hit the ground running with it’s first patch release of 2026 with 11 bulletins, including updates to Dreamweaver, InDesign, Illustrator, InCopy, Bridge, Substance Modeler, Stager, Painter, Sampler and Designer and Cold Fusion. The severity of the updates range from Important to Critical and users are encouraged to update as soon as possible. Worth noting, no updates to Acrobat or Reader as of the time of this post.

Like Microsoft, Adobe now releases updates to their products on the second Tuesday of each month. Adobe will also release ‘out of band’ updates if necessary to address critical vulnerabilities in their products. Adobe products include Adobe Reader (for viewing PDF files), Adobe Flash Player (often used to watch videos, for interactive content like games, etc.), Adobe Shockwave and the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Lightroom, etc

Additional details are available from Adobe Here including links to download the update(s) and instructions for installation.

Honorable Mentions

Fortinet – Fortinet has posted a number of vulnerabilities in a number of products that we covered earlier here.

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Article Submitted by Nathan J. Underwood, CEH