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Keeping your OS patched isn't enough
The prevailing wisdom is that if you keep your operating system up to date with the latest security patches, and you run antivirus software, you're probably safe from malware. Unfortunately, that's just not true.
Consider yesterday's news that Trend Micro has discovered a new zero-day exploit in Adobe Reader. Who doesn't have Adobe Reader on their machine? If you have it, how careful are you about keeping it up to date? To be fair, the likelihood that you are going to try to open an infected PDF file is probably fairly small, but on the other hand, Adobe Reader is only one of probably hundreds of applications on your machine. As Mozilla recently discovered, thousands of Firefox users have potentially vulnerable older versions of Flash running on their machines.
So what's a responsible computer user to do? It's a difficult problem. Some software vendors are very responsible about pushing out updates to their software when needed. Others leave it in the user's hands. There are tools that will scan your machine and let you know when updates are available, but I'm not a big fan of these; I think users should know just what is changing on their system.
The best you can do is to be vigilant and consider your software at the same level you do the operating system when ensuring your machine is up to date. Obviously web-facing software or software that interacts with downloaded files are the biggest concern, and anything that is ubiquitous or incredibly popular, like Microsoft Office or your favorite browser.
What do you do to make sure your machine is as secure as you can make it?
[via InSecurity Complex]
Comments
22
Subscribe to commentsmatyOct 12th 2009 7:13AM
What I'd like to see is not just a program that checks for updates, but can actually update ALL of your Windows software completely, not making you wonder endlessly around hundreds of various websites to keep everything patched.
Having a program cetrally on your PC that checks all of your software ad can update it all at the click of a button would be pretty slick.
Business proposition anyone :)?
Atanas BoevOct 12th 2009 12:25PM
On XP I use two accounts, one is restricted user for everyday use, and another has administrator privileges, and I switch to it only when installing something. I never browse as root/Administrator. This has saved my computer number of times, both from trojans and attempts to install "bundled programs" (Adobe does that too).
Another good XP habit I got from Linux is to make separate partition for home, root and swap. I have three partitions - one with c:\windows\ inside, another d:\ where I move "My documents", and Outlook data files, and e:\ where I move the swap file. Then it is easy to set separate permissions, and disallow the "user" to touch anything in c:\. Also, it is easier to make ghost copy of c: and reinstal the system in mint condition in 10 minutes, while keeping all my data.