It has been widely reported in the press and on Microsoft's own web site, that on July 16th we released a critical security bulletin (MS03-026) and a patch regarding a vulnerability in the Windows operating system. We wanted to make sure that if you were not aware of this bulletin and corresponding patch that you take a moment to go to http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/ ms03-026.asp to find out if you are running an affected version of the Windows operating system and get the specific information as to what you need to do to apply this patch if you have not already.

Although we encourage you to pay attention to all security bulletins and to deploy patches in a timely manner we wanted to call special attention to this particular instance as we have become aware of some activity on the internet that we believe increases the likelihood of the exploitation of this vulnerability. Specifically, code has been published on several web sites that would allow someone to spread a worm/virus that takes advantage of the vulnerability in question thereby impacting your computing environment.