You can't have good security unless you keep your operating system and applications current, with all of the latest patches and updates. Microsoft makes it easy for Windows users with its automatic updates, and yet a new report finds that many PCs with automatic updates enabled are nevertheless not actually up to date.
The
OPSWAT Market Share Analysis of Antivirus & Operating Systems report, released Tuesday, is based on data gathered from users of OPSWAT GEARS security monitoring tools. The information used represents approximately 4,500 users who were surveyed between May 1 and October 1 of 2014.
The primary focus of the study—as the title implies—is to analyze the relative market share of different antivirus solutions by region, or operating system platform. The data that stands out the most in the report, though, is this: Even though 89 percent of the Windows systems surveyed have automatic updates enabled (96 percent among Windows 8.1 devices in the survey), less than 30 percent of them are actually current with all updates and patches.
