5 Common Myths about Software Updates You Need to Know About

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Learn more about them and don’t believe they’re true.

After every major data breach or ransomware attacks happens, you probably hear at least someone saying: “If they had applied software updates in time, maybe these attacks could have been prevented or avoided”.

When it comes to closing vulnerabilities found in computers and systems, the go-to solution is always patching the software, but how many of us really apply updates in a timely manner?

Many cybersecurity specialists and practitioners, ourselves included, keep focusing on raising awareness on this topic and urging both Internet users and organizations to update (or patch) their software as soon as they are available.

Besides constant, friendly warnings and all the efforts made to address this issue, software updating remains one of those things that no one does, ignore or postpone it as much as possible.

Patching is often considered challenging, and hard or, at least, that’s what most of us believe it is. But not applying software updates – especially the critical ones – quickly and regularly only makes everyone (Internet users and organizations) more vulnerable to ransomware, data breaches, and other online threats.

The cybersecurity risks of not keeping software up to date

Two of the most devastating and serious cyber attacks examples we can think of, were only possible because security updates weren’t installed in time. The Equifax data breach was caused by a security hole in the Apache Struts web application framework which wasn’t updated. The WannaCry ransomware attack of “unprecedented level” also did a lot of damage, but mainly affected those computers that were unpatched and unprotected.

In light of the recent Asus malware attack which was spread through software updates, Matt Blaze, a professor at Georgetown University, shared his thoughts on the topic of patching, in which he emphasized the importance of applying updated to be safer online.

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