If It Is Not Patched, It Is Not Yours!

[LSW]

It is that simple. If you do not keep your software and servers and computers up to date and patched, then that software, servers, computer and the data on them will not be yours for long.

 

You all know of Wanna-cry, the ransomware that made the news the summer of 2017, it was in all the news, from big corporations to us little folk, hospitals and even Australian street traffic cameras were effected. But what our security news headlines made clear was ignored by the usual vanilla press, and that was that every big target that was effected and made the news... they were all running the same outdated servers and software.

 

Two months after all this settles down, Honda assembly lines were shut down by wanna-cry... because they had not updated/replaced outdated servers still after the first round of attacks. These are professionals and people you trust and they are making stupid mistakes.

 

Now this:

Equifax Suffered Data Breach After It Failed to Patch Old Apache Struts Flaw, a known vulnerability is ignored and now 143 million of us get to pay the price.

 

Do not be stupid, be smarter than these organizations. Keep your machines up to date, keep your software up to date, keep your virus signatures up to date, ensure your websites or your customers web sites  are on servers kept up to date.

 

Reading my posts and hardening your browsers and using VPNs and Tor and virtual machines is a waste of time if you are running on old software and your machine does not have the latest security patches to keep it secure. You might as well just prop your door open when you leave the house.

 

I suggest you install Secunia PSI or at least something like it. It runs in your task bar on windows and will turn red whenever you have outdated software. Some you can update directly from the interface and some you will need to go to the site  or software to update. It will show your software you have added as well as some system files and such and you can choose to ignore some if you have a reason not to update. You can download it from your favorite freeware sites. This is the link to Snapfiles: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/secunia.html

 

Updating is a pain, but you must do it pr your stuff may not me yours for much longer.