Internet security breach is tackled

A report in today’s BBC News Online suggests that we will all be getting a download for our operating systems to try to head off a major internet security breach, discovered by accident.

The breach would allow criminals to redirect internet users to fake websites, in an attempt to prise private information from them. The research into a ‘fix’ has been going on in private for about 6 months, since the flaw was discovered in the DNS (Domain Name system).

Whilst we thought this story news worthy, we do not want our users to panic. Microsoft and other computing giants (Cisco, Sun, etc) have been working on this, and will provide an automatic security update to stop any potential danger before it gets to us, the users.

What we would like to do, however, is to remind our users of the importance of performing regular Operating System updates. On Windows computers this is quite easy by going into the menu option ‘Windows Update’. When you get to the update site, instead of choosing the usual ‘Express Updates’, choose ‘Custom’ every now and again, to ensure that all the updates you may want are downloaded. Any security patches, such as that mentioned above, will fall under ‘Critical’ and therefore ‘Express’ updates, so no need to worry on that score.

Have you checked to see if Automatic updates are turned on for your computer? If not, do so now. If you do not want the updates coming down automatically, visit the updates website, and manually download all of the security updates.