Microsoft's March 2026 Patch Tuesday Updates Fix 8 Critical Vulnerabilities

Microsoft’s March 2026 Patch Tuesday fixes 84 vulnerabilities across Windows and enterprise products.

Microsoft has released the March 2026 Patch Tuesday updates for all supported versions of Windows 11. This month’s Patch Tuesday includes fixes for 84 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, SQL Server, Azure, .NET, and other components.

On the quality and experience updates front, Microsoft’s latest Patch Tuesday brings improvements for File Explorer reliability and a built‑in Sysmon tool for enhanced system monitoring. It also adds a network speed test accessible from the taskbar and enables Quick Machine Recovery by default on eligible devices.

Microsoft has released patches to address several vulnerabilities, including privilege escalation, remote code execution (RCE), and denial of service flaws. Eight of them are rated Critical, and the rest are rated Important in severity. Here are the most critical vulnerabilities fixed with this month’s Patch Tuesday updates:

You can find the full list of CVEs included in this month’s Patch Tuesday below:

Microsoft has released the KB5079473 update for Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2. The System Monitor (Sysmon) tool is now available as an optional Windows 11 feature, and it can be enabled by heading to Settings > System > Optional features. Moreover, users can access the network speed test tool from the Wi‑Fi or Cellular Quick Settings, or by right-clicking the network icon in the system tray on Windows 11 PCs.

Additionally, the latest update adds support for Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) on Windows 11 Arm64 devices. The Quick Machine Recovery tool is now enabled by default on Windows Professional devices that are not domain‑joined and not enrolled in enterprise endpoint management.

Lastly, Microsoft has addressed a BitLocker bug that was previously causing Windows 11 devices to stop responding after users entered their recovery key. This patch also improves the reliability of File Explorer when searching across multiple drives or “This PC”.

Organizations looking to deploy this month’s patches should conduct thorough testing before deploying them widely on production systems. That said, applying the patches widely shouldn’t be delayed longer than necessary, as hackers start to work out how to weaponize newly reported vulnerabilities.

A best practice is to make sure you have backed up systems before applying updates. Every month, users experience issues with Windows updates that lead to systems not booting, application and hardware compatibility issues, or even data loss in extreme cases.

There are backup tools built into Windows and Windows Server that you can use to restore systems in the event a patch causes a problem. The backup features in Windows can be used to restore an entire system, or files and folders on a granular basis.

Rabia has a master's degree in Software Engineering and she has years of experience writing professionally Microsoft products and other technologies. Rabia has also written for OnMSFT.com as well as Windows Report. She is always up to date on t...