MGR IT

Adobe have released security updates for Adobe Reader 9.3 and Adobe Acrobat 8.2 for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX.  These security updates fix several bugs that could potentially result in your computer being attacked and allowing criminals to access your personal or business information.  I certainly recommend installing the update.

If you have automatic updates turned on in Adobe Reader or Acrobat you should be prompted next time you run those products to update with the security patch.  If you are not prompted, then I would suggest first attempting the update by selecting Help – Check for Updates from the menu and if that does not work, downloading the update manually from the Adobe web site.

The rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and the new kid on the block, Google Buzz, has huge implications for privacy for those who use them. 

Some suggest that no-one cares about privacy any more and while that may be an exaggeration, there is certainly a trend in that direction.  It is certainly not a trend that I personally subscribe to and I wonder whether those keen to put their lives online have really thought through what they are doing.

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Various versions of Microsoft Windows have support end dates coming up that may impact on you if you use these versions.

Support for Windows Vista with no service packs will end on 13th April, 2010 and support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 will end on 13th July, 2010.  This means that to receive security updates, hotfixes and assisted support from Microsoft, you will need to upgrade these versions to a supported service pack.  The current service pack for Windows Vista is SP2 and the current service pack for Windows XP is SP3.

Also coming to the end of its supported life is Windows 2000, in all of its versions.  In this case, the Windows 200 product will end its Extended Support phase on 13th July, 2010.  This is pretty much the end of the support line for Windows 2000; Microsoft will no longer offer free or paid support for the product after this date and will provide no further security updates or hotfixes.  The only support remaining after this date will be self-help support such as online Knowledge Base articles and FAQs, which are guaranteed to remain available for at least twelve months after the end of Extended Support.  If you are running Windows 2000 on servers or PCs, then I strongly recommend that you upgrade to a more recent version of Windows.

You can find more information on the end of support for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista with no service packs here.  You can find more information on the end of support for Windows 2000 and some information about Windows Server 2003 support changes here.

Google is going to begin phasing out support for the Internet Explorer 6 browser as of the 1st of March.  Google Docs and Google Sites will not support “older browsers” after that date, which means anything before Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0 and Safari 3.0.  Presumably other Google services will follow suit.

For anyone who keeps their systems up to date, this will have no impact, as Internet Explorer 6 is old (and seriously flawed) technology.  However, there are plenty of unpatched systems out there still using IE6 – over 10% according to the w3schools browser statistics site.

If yours is one of those systems, then you should make the switch now, either by upgrading to Internet Explorer 8, or by changing to another browser, such as Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

Windows 7 has been officially out for almost a month now and the reviews have been almost uniformly glowing.  Certainly, my own experience, starting from the beta several months ago, through the release candidate and now the final release version, has been very positive.

The benefits of Windows 7 have been discussed widely, though some of them are fairly intangible and not terribly compelling.  What I want to look at here are some cold, hard, real world reasons why businesses would upgrade from Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7.

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The “Ute-gate” affair* that is currently dominating Australian politics is obviously interesting from a political point of view, but it also raises issues around the reliability of e-mail evidence. 

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Estimates for the proportion of e-mail that is actually spam range from 80-95%. Whatever the exact figure, it is obviously very high. Efforts to produce technological solutions to the problem are ongoing, but there is no magic bullet just around the corner.

Here, then, is a brief rundown of spam avoidance methods that are available now to minimise the problem as far as possible.

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Every now and then some piece of malware (virus, worm, trojan, etc.) is regarded as noteworthy enough to break out of the confines of the IT media and makes news in the mainstream media.  The latest of these is the Conficker worm.  There has been a lot said about this worm and the dire effects it could have on April 1st, but anyone taking common sense precautions has nothing to fear.

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It was “Patch Tuesday” this week for Microsoft and this month saw some noteworthy fixes released, two of which are rated Important and one Critical.

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There have been some alarming statistics released by Secunia, a Danish vulnerability intelligence provider, in recent days.  According to figures culled from Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector system, used by 20,000 people worldwide, less than 2% of Windows are fully patched against known security vulnerabilities in the various programs installed.

Given the problems that malware (viruses, trojans, worms, spyware) cause and the detrimental effect that these vulnerabilities have on system performance and uptime, that is a very disappointing and worrying figure.  It’s no wonder that Google has warned of a malware epidemic. 

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