Software Bugs And Vulnerabilities Increase
Over a period of time, software is known to increase in the number of exploits and vulnerabilities due to the fact that hackers and cyber criminals find new ways to break into the software. The Danish security firm named Secunia discovered third-party software was responsible for the very large increase in bugs and vulnerabilities in the first half of the year 2010. These flaws that were found in non-Microsoft software placed users at a higher risk mainly because third-party software vendors do not provide any type of automated update services for their software, leaving the task to users to locate the updates and manually install them.
“We were very surprised to discover how many vulnerabilities existed in other software applications. The total increase in vulnerabilities seemed to be due to these applications, not Microsoft's.” This statement was made by the research analyst director of Secunia, Stefan Frei. By using their own tool which is free to download, the Personal Software Inspector, Fray victory was able to collect various pieces of information concerning the average pieces a number of applications used within the Windows personal computer environment. Secunia was able to compile a list comprised of the top fifty software applications of a personal computer and counted the possible vulnerabilities within those applications. They then compared those numbers to estimate how many would be found in the entire year with bug counts as far back as the year 2005. “The analysis locates and identifies the various vulnerabilities in third-party applications that are the cause for the continuing increase in the vulnerability count that has been noticed since the year 2007. Information gleaned from the first half of this year demonstrates third-party application vulnerabilities have become the main risk in user's personal systems.”
It is estimated that third-party software application bugs will increase by ninety two percent. The total increase in possible exploits a Windows user may face in the year 2010, approximately seventy nine percent will be from these third-party software applications instead of Microsoft applications including Windows, Office, or Internet Explorer. As Frei believes this increasing statistic and rise of vulnerabilities leave many users perplexed he also states “from the sight of the user, it brings an amount of greater complexity, which in turn increases the management of a computer system. Information from over ten years demonstrates the entire model has not been able to decrease the vulnerability count located, with a small amount of hope it will decrease by a wide amount in the coming years.” He also feels that “the average to casual user should have the ability to install fixesreducing any opportunities of the cyber criminals.”
Secunia is currently creating an update to their Personal Software Inspector utility that will automatically download security patches from approximately 3000 software makers. Hopefully the latest version will be ready to ship by the end of the year. “This will make the process automatic, downloading and installing third party installation fixes. It will occur automatically, or by the desire of the user, a manual option alerting the user it exists and is ready to install.”
CISSP training courses in conjunction with safe practices including continual download of security fixes and patches or necessity to gain control over software exploitation. K Alliance training in the area of information security is an excellent source to learn about the many facets that need to be strengthened in the area of user, small business, and large-scale organization information security protection.
About Us: Expert Training is an excellent resource of IT certification training, business soft skills training, and online training videos. PMP project management training courses are created and carefully designed to improve the success rate of an organization’s projects and lending assistance to their successful deployment and quality of expectations. All of the Expert Training tutorials and training courses can be found in online format is online training videos were at a very convenient format of CBT and DVD videos. Discover how Expert Training can become your primary training resource.