A lot of people think their computer is secure, they may have a firewall and antivirus software loaded. But really the big key here is that Microsoft releases security updates for Windows, for all the operating systems, including servers, once a week.

And even though you may have great antivirus software, you may have a great spam filter, you may have a great firewall, but if you’re not keeping your updates on your computer, it’s still very vulnerable. They push those updates out for a reason, mostly to patch security holes.

Some are performance upgrades. You know, some are functional upgrades. But most of them are to patch security holes in the operating system that their security team spends 24/7 looking for. Or, if other companies have found security holes, which is quite frequent, they’ll send out patches as well.

So with our systems, and as part of our contracts, we actually have a utility that does that automatically. We can schedule that, and we actually test the patches to make sure it doesn’t break other commonly used software. And once we feel good, we push those out to our clients’ computers and servers. We do that after hours. We wake up all the systems. We push the updates they get installed and rebooted all remotely, typically, odd hours of the morning while nobody’s in the office.

So it’s extremely important to keep up with those. And a lot of people don’t because if you don’t have an automatic system doing it, that means you have to do it manually. And even though it may prompt and ask you to do it. Most people just say, “do it later, do it later, do it later.” Because they’re in the middle of something, and they don’t want to install and have to reboot their system. Now, I’ve got to sit here for, for 30 minutes while this finishes. So that’s why we do them after hours and automatically, and they’re done.

Do you need help getting it done and staying secure, automatically? Give us a call!

Host info

Kelly Herrod, the founder and CEO of Herrod Technology, started the company in 2000 to provide simple IT solutions for small and mid-sized businesses. His personal approach, over 30 years experience and his ability to simplify IT sets him apart in the IT industry.

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