Your own, customised, personal Microsoft security bulletin dashboard

When Microsoft publishes a raft of new security updates, the last thing an IT system administrator needs is to get a headache trying to unravel what patches they need for what versions of what software throughout their organisation.

So it’s good to see Microsoft announce yesterday that it was providing a new dashboard – called myBulletins that hopes to cut through the cobweb of confusion.

All you need to do is log into myBulletins (you will need a Microsoft account) and build your profile by selecting which Microsoft products you are interested in.

Bingo! You can now view your personalised dashboard, complete with details of which security patches are available.

In a blog post, Tracey Pretorius of Microsoft Trustworthy Computing team explained that myBulletins was created following customer feedback.

Starting today, myBulletins will enable you to quickly find security bulletins using advanced search and filtering options. The online service prioritizes security bulletin deployment by release date, severity, and reboot requirements to aid in decision making. The service provides a dynamic list in a customizable dashboard that can be edited at any time, as well as downloaded to a Microsoft Excel report.

Perhaps surprisingly, the service even allows you to keep track of security bulletins for products that are no longer officially supported by the company – such as Windows XP, even though the chances of a security update being pushed out for that is currently seen as being as likely as finding a crayfish that whistles.

Will you use myBulletins? How do you think Microsoft could improve it? Leave a comment below, explaining your thoughts.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.