Keep Your Windows Updates Current

The SANS institute Internet Storm Center has estimated the survival time of a computer that has not been updated with Windows updates and patches at only 4 minutes. Read the full story here at ComputerWorld.

While this seems a little hard to believe, it is probably not that far from the truth. Here in our office we keep detailed logs of our firewall activity. Since we use a high end commercial firewall, they are much more detailed that those available to the average user on their home systems. We see attacks and probes every few seconds. There are hundreds of thousands of computers that intentionally probe the Internet for vulnerable computers. It is really a shame that the Internet is such a great resource and it is abused by so many people. The number of undesirable characters out there that want to do you some virtual harm is simply mind boggling.

So next time you see Windows pop up a message telling you updates are available, don't ignore it.