PC Security Warning Issued

That Out-Of-Date Software Is Putting You At Risk

Your PC may be at risk of being compromised if you have not updated your PC’s software lately which will make you open to bugs, incompatibility problems and an open door to hackers.  Hackers take advantage of holes in programs and operating systems [OS] that have not had critical security updates.

The astonishing thing is that over half of applications installed on Windows PCs are out of date according to research done by Avast a security company which gathered anonymous data from millions of devices. At least 55 percent of all software installed in PCs worldwide are older.

Here is a partial list of programs that are being left out-of-date by users without the updated security measures: Adobe Shockwave, VLC Media Player, Skype, Java Runtime Environment, and 7-Zip Filemanager.

Some apps have patched their vulnerabilities, but if users have not updated their programs it doesn’t do them any good.  Users have to update their apps!  Not only will this provide a better running program when they update their apps, but it will also protect them from hackers because hackers are looking for loopholes in apps.

Also according to Avast, so many users are using updated programs, but they haven’t updated their operating systems and this makes them open to hacking as well.

Based on anonymous data gathered from approximately 163 million devices at least one in six Windows 7 users and one in ten Windows 10 users are open to “exploitation of system-level security vulnerabilities.”

Avast reports that there are hundreds of millions of PCs that are still using Windows 7 and about 15 percent of these millions of users are not  

receiving security updates because they have not updated their operating systems – they are still using the pre-released beta version of the operating system.

“We need to be doing more to ensure our devices are not putting us at unnecessary risk,” said Ondrej Vlcek, president of Avast.

According to ZDNet, “Ensuring that software and systems are patched and up to date can go a long way to protecting users from cyber attacks — and providing them with a more efficient, easier-to-use PC.”

So update everyone.  Let your PCs do it overnight and wake up to a better running PC with the security you need to sleep safe and sound.