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Your Windows PC is more vulnerable than you think, if this new research is anything to go by.
A study by Duo Security suggests one in four Windows devices are open to more than 700 vulnerabilities – because users are running outdated (and unsupported) versions of Internet Explorer.
Since Microsoft no longer patches weaknesses in Internet Explorer, these can leave your computer open to data breaches, theft and malicious software.
Analysing data from more than two million devices, the online security company also found 72 per cent of Java users are running an out-of-date version of the software and 60 per cent of users have not updated Adobe Flash.
According to the report, this should be a cause for concern as “Flash and Java are notorious targets, used by attackers in exploit kits to gain access to their machines”.
Both of these plug-ins could allow hackers to access devices and steal confidential information – putting users and organisations at a major risk.
“Organisations need visibility into the health of all devices accessing their business applications,” said Mike Hanley, director of Duo Labs. “Each of these outdated devices poses a significant risk to a company.
“Visibility and insight will help better protect organisations against breaches.”
The researchers recommend people switch from IE to memory-hogging Chrome browser because it “receives automatic and frequent updates”, and is less likely to be target for hackers.
Duo Security’s research also showed Macs are more up-to-date compared to Windows devices, with 53 per cent of Apple devices fully updated with the latest patches for the computers operating system as well as software.
This compares to only 35 per cent of Windows users who are running the latest version of Windows 10 or Windows 8.1.
“Apple users may be more likely to update their operating systems because these updates have been known to be quite stable,” the research says. “In addition, new OS X versions are also free and heavily promoted by Apple.”
