Windows 7: The Apps Users Don't Patch

One of the weakest links is the system of leaving it up to users to manually update their software: it’s just not a given that most will bother doing it. New and unpublished data from Secunia shows just how inconsistently users update -- and how it leaves them and their organizations at risk.



Secunia in May took a random sample of U.S.-based PC users from its Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) scans, and found that third-party apps are the worst-kept software: 66 percent of vulnerabilities came from third-party applications, 18 percent, from Microsoft software, and 16 percent, from operating systems. Some 13.7 percent of users were running unpatched operating systems, the data found: 16 percent of XP users, 13.7 percent of Vista users, and 12.8 percent of Windows 7 users.