Chris Christianson, an analyst with IDC in Framingham, Mass., said the early move by Microsoft to release the patch is not a surprise because the company has "grown much more responsive over the last few years to security vulnerabilities." The company created its regularly-scheduled update cycle in response to earlier customer concerns of previous piecemeal efforts and is now breaking from its regular schedule because of the severity of this vulnerability, he said.

"I see this as a good thing, that they see this as a schedule that needs to be broken" in this case, Christianson said.