"The typical home user running Windows faces the "unreasonable" task of patching software an average of every five days, a security and vulnerability research company said today.
"It's completely unreasonable to expect users to master so many different patch mechanisms and spend so much time patching," said Thomas Kristensen, the chief security officer of Secunia. The result is that few consumers devote the time and attention necessary to stay atop the patching job, which leaves them open to attack.
After comparing the software portfolios on each machine with the bugs Secunia tracked during 2009, Secunia determined that the typical user faced nearly 300 vulnerabilities during the year, and with the number of vendors represented on the PC, had to deal with approximately 75 patch incidents annually.
That averages out to a patch action every 4.9 days.
"It surprised us that there were so many applications on the systems," said Kristensen, "and that then there were so many updates they had to do in a year." Also important, he said, was that the typical user had to master 22 different patch mechanisms, one from each of the 22 software makers whose programs were on her PC."
To read the rest of the article, go here:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/030410-typical-windows-user-patches-every.html
Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist
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