Major Week of Patches and Updates
Microsoft headlined the security news this week with its huge Patch Tuesday update. However, Microsoft's updates weren't the only ones happening this week.
Adobe announced that it will have a patch available on April 15 for Flash Player to fix a zero-day vulnerability exploited in Microsoft Word. (Adobe Reader will be patched in June.)
Also being updated is Apple's iOS 4.3.2. As a ZDNet blog post described it, iOS, which is the operating system for iPhones and iPads, will see numerous fixes that will address improvements and security issues.
Why is it so important to pay attention to these update alerts? Because fixing the vulnerabilities can improve computer security, perhaps more than any other action we take. As Bradley Antis of M86 Security told me, most of the top software and OS vulnerabilities have been patched, yet the software and OS are still exploited because people don't heed the alerts. Doing the update now or putting it off until tomorrow really can be the difference on whether your computer stays clean or gets infected.
