Typically, when speaking with some people, they say “I have Norton installed” or “I have AVG” or some other antivirus program they will quote, telling me it is up to date and doing scans. What they don’t realize, and I explain to all my clients, is that anti-virus software isn’t enough. No matter what program you have, and no matter if it was free or a really expensive software package.
Some anti-virus suites come with extra protection including firewalls, spyware, rootkit scanners, etc. but there is still a risk. In order for Internet, email and other programs to work on the Internet, there need to be doors open. With these doors open, hackers find weaknesses and can get in. Windows provides regular updates to patch these holes.
If you are relying strictly on anti-virus protection, you are at risk of getting a virus still, which your anti-virus program may not know about, as well as a hacker which you are then at risk of something far greater than a virus… Identity theft! If you don’t truly understand what identity theft is, you can be screwed out of millions of dollars you don’t even have, and it is almost impossible to prove it wasn’t you that purchase that boat, motorcycle, cottage, Ferrari, etc.
Windows updates are critical to your system performance, stability and security. Although they have been know to create problems themselves, it has been proven that installing your updates as part of a preventative maintenance plan, far outweighs the potential issues that can be caused by installing those very updates.
Same thing goes for installing updates for Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Java updates which are common on all computers. Other updates are also available for various software applications you run on your computer.
Install your updates as you are prompted, and check your anti-virus regularly to ensure it is still working. Even though you maybe bought a paid version and it is supposed to be automatic. Check it to be sure the things that are supposed to be happening automatically, are happening automatically. If you don’t have time to do it yourself because you’re running a business, or don’t know how or don’t want to learn how to stay on top of all this; you can hire Twinbytes to do this for you.