14 DAY TRIAL // Security company Secunia proved us that some people simply ignore the basic security measures and get their computers vulnerable to attacks without even knowing. In fact, the security of their computers seems to be pretty ignored, if you simply analyze the findings of a research conducted by the same security firm. Just listen to this: 4.54 percent of the computers contained no insecure applications, 27.83 percent got 0-5 insecure applications while a shocking 41.94 percentage of the systems included in the research hosted 11 or more insecure software!
And keep in mind that the total number of scanned computers was 20,009! Yep, that means that no less than "95 out of a 100 computers that are connected to the Internet have insecure software installed", Jakob Balle wrote on the Secunia blog.
In case the "insecure application" is pretty unsure, you should know that all the computers which contained one or more such programs actually got older versions of software, which have been flagged as insecure after more or less critical vulnerabilities were discovered. That's why security companies patch them every once in a while, that's why you get new versions of software periodically, that's why you should all install them on your system!
"Are computers up-to-date with security patches? The short answers is NO - by no means. Close to all computers are running with several insecure applications installed", Jakob Balle made a short summary of the study.
The Secunia research was based on the information provided by the company's PSI (Personal Software Inspector), a downloadable solution that monitors the software solutions installed on your computer and notifies you every time an insecure application is spotted on the system. The program works on most Windows versions, including XP with Service Pack2, Windows 2003, Windows Vista and Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4.