The Importance Of Patching

In a state of complete exhaustion from having to clean friends’ computers repeatedly of viruses and other malware, I’m going to babble on a bit about patching and updating your software.

There is this thing called Windows Update. Microsoft, perhaps not the most security conscious of companies, but even so, Microsoft, release patches and updates to Windows through this mechanism. Strangely enough, some of them actually fix (or at least, cover up) security problems with Windows itself, or with other Microsoft software.

Running Windows Update is not something that should be thought of as a time-consuming waste of bandwidth, rather as an essential part of system maintenance, just like keeping AntiVirus definitions up to date (which I believe I talked about a month or so ago!).

But lets not just consider Windows Update. Applications such as Winamp, Adobe Reader, etc. often “bug” the user with annoying notices saying that there’s a new version available and they should upgrade. There is a reason for this: often these versions fix bugs; and not just the security ones.

I find it unbelievable that people tell it not to remind them to update. Obviously, if you remember to manually update every week (or other suitable unit of time) then there’s no problem here, but if you tell it not to remind you, and then get stung by a security problem that was fixed in a later version, well, you only have yourself to blame.

There is no excuse for running an out of date system. Many vendors release patches even for older versions of their software, so if your business depends on that Windows 98 computer, then you should still be able to keep it up to date. Of course, you should also upgrade to something newer anyway, so that when the time comes for support to be dropped, you don’t get caught out!