Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a lot of security promises at the company's partner conference last week. On Wednesday, Microsoft began making good on some of his commitments.

On Wednesday – it usual security patch day -- Microsoft rolled out the first of what it has said will be monthly security update announcements. Going forward, the company plans to make all of its non-critical security announcements on a single day (the second calendar Tuesday of every month).

Microsoft also delivered for XP customers a smaller and more convenient collection of security fixes, in the form of a single XP Security Rollup package. Microsoft is making the rollup available immediately.

The rollup product has been in beta test during the past month. According to the beta invitation, "Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Windows XP … consists of 22 previously released critical and security updates for Windows XP rolled into one convenient package. Installing this item provides you the same results as installing the individual updates."

A Microsoft spokesman confirmed that the rollup includes a mix of both security-related and other important patches and fixes in a smaller, compressed footprint. The rollup builds on top of Windows XP Service Pack 1, which Microsoft released last year. It is available either by Windows Update or Software Update Services.

In its Wednesday security notification, Microsoft released seven new fixes: five involving Windows and two involving Exchange. Three of the Windows fixes were deemed "critical," as was one of the Exchange fixes. All of the bulletins are on Microsoft's TechNet Security site.

Several of Wednesday's patches remedied buffer-overflow-related problems. Another fixed an Authenticode verification problem that could allow for malicious remote-code execution.