Hello everyone,

Many of my first time clients can’t understand why they get infected. They do all of the “right things”, but they still get bit. Our initial conversation usually goes something like this (me talking):

“Yes, it’s very good not to click on links in emails. Yes, it’s very good not to click on pop-ups that claim that your computer is infected. Yes, it’s very good to update and run a good antvirus. Yes, it’s very good to have your firewall turned on. Yes, it’s very good to not login to an account via an email link”.

But….

What about the myriad of third party apps that are not getting updated and therefore are full of security vulnerabilities just waiting to be exploited?

Many clients are totally unaware of this fact.

I see machines full of unpatched and/or outdated third party apps – and there are a mess of them. Consider the following:

Browers: Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
Media: Apple iTunes, Apple Quicktime, Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Shockwave, Real Player
Runtimes: Adobe Air, Jave Runtime Environment
Utilities: 7-Zip, WinZip, Adobe Reader, Pidgin, BlackBerry Desktop Software

If any of these apps are out-of-date or unpatched, your computer is vulnerable to exploitation! What to do?

It is a “pain in the behind” to check out all of these third party apps manually. I really like SUMo (Sotware Update Monitor) to do this for me all in one swipe. SUMo will check all of your software and tell you which app needs to be updated to the most recent version. How great is that?

When you download SUMo, get the ZIP/7z version of the software to aviod any adware (Relevant Knowledge & Open Candy) that may piggyback along with the “good stuff”.

Professor Randy says: When protecting your computer from malware, don’t forget about those third party apps. You can avoid infection by using SUMo to tell you which ones need to be updated/patched.