At the end of March, there was a mad rush to get laptops and other portable devices into the hands of employees as quickly as possible due to the coronavirus pandemic. Device usage increased exponentially. But with that increased usage also came many security and IT challenges. One of those challenges are ensuring devices are up to date with the latest patches and software updates. A study published by Absolute showed that since the uptick in device usage, at least 1 in 4 devices have critical security apps that are out of compliance. On average, Microsoft Windows 10 devices were 78 days behind on patching and 8 out of 10 Windows devices were using versions more than one-year-old.
Keeping your device software in compliance was always critical under normal circumstances but even more so now.
Software updates are important to your digital safety and overall cybersecurity. The sooner updates are deployed, the sooner you can feel confident your device is more secure, thus keeping the overall network of your organization secure as well.
Here are five reasons why it’s important to update your device software regularly:
- Repairs security holes that have been discovered and fixes or removes computer bugs. If security gaps are left unchecked hackers can take advantage of this weakness by writing code to target the vulnerability.
- Protects your data and operating systems and helps keep hackers at bay. When you consider how nearly everything is stored digitally, your documents suddenly seem far more at risk than ever before. Software updates protect your data from theft by cybercriminals who try to exploit gaps in software in order to compromise your device.
- Adds new features to your devices and removes outdated ones. Developers are constantly looking to add new and improve features to make the end-user experience better.
- Improves performance and stability of the applications on your device. Software speed is important and also the updates provides better compatibility with different devices or applications.
- Increases productivity. Sometimes your device may run slower than usual if it is not operating on the latest and greatest update which can possibly lead to a delayed turn around time to complete important task.