One of the biggest annoyances in the IT world are updates. Although they may be annoying and have the bad reputation of kicking in at the worst times possible, they are important for keeping your system running at 100%.
Every time an update is available, we at Firestorm Cyber recommend applying system updates for a variety of reasons.
Updating your system is relatively easy. Your device may even remind you and notify you whenever a new update is available. In order to update your system, like on a computer or phone, head over to the settings page of your device. Once in your device settings, updates usually have their own submenu, labeled updates and security or something along those lines. If that submenu is not available or visible, the update options may be in the general settings menu, like on an iPhone. Once located the option to update, we recommend saving and closing any open apps or files to prevent data loss. Once you are certain that all your files are saved, you can go ahead and kick off the update, if there is one available. Just as easy as that, your computer/device will do the rest and update accordingly.
Preforming system updates is crucial for a variety of reasons. For one, system updates are important to use your device at 100%. System updates are able to fix faulty software bugs that made it through development. Patches by system updates also help fix issues that may arise when new features are implemented but users point out issues that otherwise would have not been found.
Updates also help keep your devices secure. Often during development of software, some bugs inevitably make it through the development process. Usually, these bugs go unnoticed unless you are actively looking for a vulnerability in the software. It is virtually impossible to catch every bug existent in a program or operating system the first time around. Sometimes, fixes to one thing may cause others to break. For this reason, operating system companies make sure to keep constant support on their devices by providing routine updates. These updates eliminate prior vulnerabilities that may affect your device usability and security.
Apple's iPhones recently fell victim of an unknown software bug/flaw in their iOS. About two-three months ago, Apple released a software update for all of the operating systems of their devices. This update was intended to fix a recently discovered flaw which allowed for NSO group’s spyware to infect any of their device lineups.
Apple promptly and efficiently released an update a few days later to fix the security breach. Even the devices that seem incapable to being hacked into can fall victim to security breaches.
Every vulnerability is impossible to be accounted for; for this reason, any operating system update should be installed as soon as you are able to.
Even if you are caught with a security breach from an unknown weakness of your operating system, Firestorm Cyber can help. By providing the best-in-class firewall service in partner with Sophos, and Endpoint protection for devices, we are able to catch anything that could result in a data compromise.
With machine learning and constantly updated virus dictionary, we are able to spot data breach problems that otherwise would be invisible to any other endpoint protection provider.