Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector) - FREE
You should by now have your Microsoft Windows software set for automatic updates to protect you against weaknesses in your Operating System (see my article about the MS Baseline Security Analyzer for ways to secure your MS software) . But what ahout the other software on your computer? Malware has been attacking weaknesses in all software and this is frequently over-looked by the average computer user with predictable (bad) results!
THE DIRTY DOZEN !
Are you part of a sad statistic? The average user without the Secunia PSI has 12 insecure programs installed on their PC!
VULNERABLE ?
Did you know that many of the hacker attacks and security threats today exploit software vulnerabilities and code flaws?
WHATS ON YOUR PC ?
The typical user has 80 programs installed. Do you know which programs you have installed? Do you know which programs expose you to security threats?
SECURE ?
Is your PC secure? Do you have all the latest security updates and patches?
PROTECT YOURSELF !
Security patches are usually free and available for download from the program vendors. Let the Secunia PSI pinpoint exactly which patches you need to secure your PC.
The Secunia PSI is a free security tool designed with the sole purpose of helping you secure your computer against vulnerabilities in programs.
I use Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector) to keep my software safe and up-to-date. This program gives extensive details on the software installed on your computer and links to update any programs that are potentially not secure. I highly recommend this useful freeware program to keep your software up to date.
Attacks exploiting vulnerable programs and plug-ins are rarely blocked by traditional anti-virus and are therefore increasingly "popular" among criminals.
The only solution to block these kind of attacks is to apply security updates, commonly referred to as patches. Patches are offered free-of-charge by most software vendors, however, finding all these patches is a tedious and time-consuming task. Secunia PSI automates this and alerts you when your programs and plug-ins require updating to stay secure.
Download and run the program and it will identify any insecure programs installed on your computer and give you links to the solutions. These solutions are normally links to the latest updates for your programs. There is an active community forum that helps with any problems you may be having. These problems are normally that you have run the update and Secunia still shows your software as being insecure.
The program runs all the time and notifies you automatically when a program is insecure. Yes, programs that were previously secure can suddenly become insecure! How? Mostly, they were insecure before but we didn't know until someone exposed the weakness!!
Here is my current report (May 2010). The graph at the bottom shows the trend over time (green is 100%). You can see that I have 1 insececure program (Adobe Acrobat) and 4 insecure browsers and that I am hardly ever perfect! Don't be too worried if you have the odd program that isn't secure (read what Secunia tells you about the threat and make a decision about whether you should uninstall or siimply wait for another update). By the way, insecure browsers aren't included in the graph and they are frequently marked as "insecure - no solution" in Secunia's report. You can also see that even with my insecure programs my system is 14% more secure than systems without Secunia.
|
