September 2025 Patch Tuesday forecast: The CVE matrix

We work in an industry driven by Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE). Each security update released by myriad vendors addresses some flaw in software that could be exploited and those flaws that are publicly acknowledged are assigned a CVE designator and associated parameters. It’s these parameters, type, severity, publicly disclosed, known exploited, CVSS, etc. that are used to determine the risk to our network and computing assets, and ultimately the priority to apply the security update or patch.

The CVE has become not only the designator around which we organize and rally, but also the resolution of the CVE is the standard against which we are measured.

September 2025 Patch Tuesday forecast

From vulnerability scanners to SBOMs

Vulnerability scanners have long been the tools used to look for potential software vulnerabilities in operational systems. In addition to confirming best practices on configuration options like firewall rules and access settings, they look for indicators of vulnerability associated with CVE. Armed with the CVE info, it’s possible to identify a remediating patch and apply it.

In recent years, there’s been a push for vendors to provide an SBOM or Software Bill of Materials associated with their software. This SBOM provides a master list of all files associated with the specific version of the product and has multiple uses. For one, it can provide insight into the security state of the package. For example, the versions of the third-party libraries in the code can be cross-referenced with reported CVE and possibly patched depending on how the library is used.

Likewise, if the vendor is part of an active CVE reporting program, its security state can be determined. The drawback to the SBOM is that it is not directly operationally actionable, but again it can be included in the CVE matrix.

Cyber insurance may soon depend on how well you patch

We see a continuous flood of articles in the news with cyberattack technical details such as the CVEs exploited, the malware used, and often the potential data lost or compromised. But there is also the associated business side of each event, which can include the actual cost of recovery, the cost of lost reputation and lost revenue, and the potential payback from cybersecurity insurance.

Rightfully so, these numbers are much harder to determine and rarely shared. Insurance in particular rarely makes the news, but the idea is especially interesting given this month’s focus on the critical role CVEs play. The concept is to adjust cyberattack payouts based on the efficiency of an organization’s patching program and its ability to respond to priority CVEs.

Regardless of whether you have cybersecurity insurance or not, the article drives home the point that we live in a risk-based environment, and we better have an efficient patch program in place to deal with the non-stop flow of software updates and associated vulnerabilities.

Windows updates trigger recovery and app failures

Microsoft was forced to deal with several problems following the August Patch Tuesday security releases. One of the first responses was a series of out-of-band releases to deal with a failure of reset and recovery operations on both Windows 10 and 11 devices.

The KBs were KB5063877, KB5063709, and KB5063875 for Windows 10 and older versions of Windows 11 respectively. These updates should be applied in lieu of the August Patch Tuesday releases.

Next up are Windows update failures when installing them from a network share using the Windows Update Standalone Installer (WUSA). While still not resolved, Microsoft is issuing a fix through Known Issue Rollback (KIR). This impacts Windows 11 24H2 and Server 2025 systems and has been a nagging problem going back to April.

Microsoft has confirmed the August 2025 security updates are causing severe issues with NDI streaming software on some Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems. They are still working on a resolution to this issue.

And finally, Microsoft is rolling out a fix to a known issue that causes “couldn’t connect” errors when launching the Microsoft Teams desktop and web applications. The August releases caused problems and instability for many users; look for the September releases to resolve these issues and hopefully not introduce any new ones.