Attack of the third party programs

There are four primary “attack” vectors that allow viruses onto your computer: Internet Explorer, Flash, Acrobat Reader, and Java.  As of late, there have been many vulnerabilities associated with these programs and virus writers have been successful in exploiting them.
The best way to protect yourself is to make sure these programs are updated to the latest release and all old versions of the programs, java in particular, are removed.  There are a couple ways you can go about this.  First, run Windows updates.  This will take care of Internet Explorer updates.  Then go to each company’s website, download the latest release of the program, and install it.  Not too difficult –until you have to do this to more than 10 computers every week to keep up with the multiple updates that are published.
The right tool for the job is always important.  Enter Ninite (ninite.com).  This is a site that allows you to create a custom installer to install/update all of the above mentioned programs – plus more.   Run the installer on each computer to update the software to the latest release.  It works great and cuts down time spent updating each machine.  If you have many machines to update there is still a time commitment involved in running the installer on each computer.
IT360, Inc. routinely runs these updates each week and validates the successful install of the latest programs for those clients that are under our Managed IT Service plan.  Under this plan there is nothing more for you to do, and one less thing to worry about in your busy day.