Why Are Windows Updates So Important? Microsoft Windows is complex software. It needs to be. In order to do everything, we need it to do every day, and work with everything we need it to work with, it contains a lot of features and capabilities baked in. The more complex your software is, the more chances there are that someone out there could find a vulnerability. This happens all the time, and when vulnerabilities are discovered, good software developers will quickly build an update that fixes them before they are exploited. That’s what Windows updates are. Sure, there are new features being added in many of the updates as well, but the security patches are what is truly critical. **Please note that sometimes it isn’t a good idea to just let Windows updates run automatically. Sometimes an update can break something else (like a third-party application or internal workflow). It’s best to test updates before deploying them across your network. Problems Get Exposed as they are Fixed Let me give you a more old-school example. Way back in the day, you used to be able to ‘hack’ a vending machine with fake coins called slugs. To combat this, new vending machines were created that had multiple sensors to measure and analyze the coin in real time to determine if it were real. When these new machines were released, they were also might newer looking than the old school, hackable vending machines. Word got out about how easily the older machines could accept a slug and encouraged people to seek them out to get free beverages. What can we take away from this? If you owned an old vending machine, you were at risk of being hacked. Older vending machines were targeted by people who knew that they were hackable, as opposed to the new vending machines that weren’t as easily exploitable. Risk increased as time went on if you owned an older vending machine. How often do you see vending machines that even take coins these days? I’m dating myself. When Microsoft releases security updates, this exposes the vulnerability to the world. This includes hackers. This means everyone is on bought time once an update comes out, because hackers know that not everyone will update. Older Operating Systems Have the Highest Risk If you are running a version of Windows (or any software) that has reached the end of its developmental and support life, you are playing with fire. For example, if you are still running Windows Vista (please, I hope you aren’t) then Microsoft’s mainstream support ended in April 2012. They offered extended support up until April 2017. Mainstream support is when Microsoft is still providing features, security updates, patching bugs, and more. Extended support is when Microsoft stops adding new features and only provides bug fixes and patches, and only provided that you are on the exact version of the software or operating system that Microsoft says they are supporting. Back to our example of running Windows Vista (my fingers crossed that this example is purely hypothetical and nobody is still using Vista), it’s pretty clear that Windows Vista was not the shining example of the perfect operating system and that by the end of life there were no flaws whatsoever for hackers to target. If you are […]