sgt_zim
AH legend
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2017
- Messages
- 4,450
- Reaction score
- 16,850
- Location
- Richmond, Texas
- Media
- 33
- Articles
- 1
- Member of
- NRA, Houston Safari Club Foundation, NWTF
- Hunted
- South Africa, Idaho, Texas, Louisiana
If I haven't mentioned it before now...
I'm in the IT security biz. I mostly defend my employer, but I also engage in attacking (called "red teaming").
Without any question at all, the very best thing you can do to secure your computer is to run updates as frequently as they are available - for the operating system as well as non-OS applications like Firefox, Chrome, Notepad++, Adobe Acrobat, and a host of others.
When I run scans against a potential victim, I love nothing better than seeing outdated software. And the older, the better for me because it means I don't usually have to spend time working on a custom payload.
Mac OS users, this applies to you as well. Malware crafted for OSX exclusively is up by over 1000% in the last 3 years, and probably even higher than that. In fact, I'd say that running updates is even more important for you since there really aren't any good anti-virus products for Mac.
Between running updates and having "good" anti-virus, running updates is more important to your security than AV, and by a very wide margin.
As an FYI, official Microsoft support for Windows 7 ends on 15 Jan 20. After that, no more security updates for that operating system. Whatever security vulnerabilities exist at midnight on that date will exist forever. And make no mistake, more vulnerabilities will be discovered in Win 7 after that date.
I'm in the IT security biz. I mostly defend my employer, but I also engage in attacking (called "red teaming").
Without any question at all, the very best thing you can do to secure your computer is to run updates as frequently as they are available - for the operating system as well as non-OS applications like Firefox, Chrome, Notepad++, Adobe Acrobat, and a host of others.
When I run scans against a potential victim, I love nothing better than seeing outdated software. And the older, the better for me because it means I don't usually have to spend time working on a custom payload.
Mac OS users, this applies to you as well. Malware crafted for OSX exclusively is up by over 1000% in the last 3 years, and probably even higher than that. In fact, I'd say that running updates is even more important for you since there really aren't any good anti-virus products for Mac.
Between running updates and having "good" anti-virus, running updates is more important to your security than AV, and by a very wide margin.
As an FYI, official Microsoft support for Windows 7 ends on 15 Jan 20. After that, no more security updates for that operating system. Whatever security vulnerabilities exist at midnight on that date will exist forever. And make no mistake, more vulnerabilities will be discovered in Win 7 after that date.
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