Because keeping up-to-date with the latest security patches
or patches at all,
for all your different types of software
is a huge hassle, we want to automate it.
Also if we do automate it, it means we're not going to forget,
and it's more likely those patches are applied,
and it's more likely that we're going to be safe from attacks.
There is one main application that I recommend for doing this,
and that is Secunia Personal Software Inspector or PSI.
And it's also free.
It's maintained by this company and they are a security company
and therefore it has a strong focus on updates where security matters most.
The update data has to be updated to be useful and
it's maintained by Secunia.
And they do quite a good job of doing that
but they don't cover all software,
but they do cover all of the software
that is important for security.
If you just simply go to the website, you're going to
have to fill in your details here,
download, you’ll get the executable.
If you run this,
select your language, Next, accept the license.
Now you have the choice of how you want this to be set.
You can set it to “Update programs automatically”,
which I recommend for you when it's all set up,
definitely set it to that.
But for when you first install it,
I recommend that you set it to “Download updates automatically”,
and then “Let me choose whether to update”.
This way you can choose
which software you may not want to have updated,
because it could be that you have some software
that you don't want to update it for different reasons.
You don't want it to start automatically
updating those applications because that's exactly what it’ll do
if you set this.
You may even not want it to download anything at all
but just check to see whether or not your software is up-to-date,
just for the install.
In fact, I'll check it to this just for the install.
And then do you want to launch it? Yes we do.
When you first start the program, it scans for software
looking for what is installed.
This can take some time,
especially if you've got a lot of applications, you've got a large hard drive.
You’ll also need a internet connection,
and it needs to get the latest updates with that internet connection.
If you don't have a connection, it may start to grumble,
and if it seems to have hung, just leave it,
it's probably just scanning to see what software you've got.
And you’ll find that this application
can become unresponsive from time to time,
but if you leave it, it's usually just
trying to do something in the background,
scanning your files, etc.
If you look here we have Settings.
If Detailed view isn't selected,
just check that check box and that will give you a better view
of what apps need to be updated.
This is the options we had while we did the install.
Here you can change it back to Update
automatically, which is recommended.
What you can do, so what I've done here is,
I've deliberately made sure that there is
some software that is
out of date.
If I click on here,
right click I can decide
perhaps I want to ignore updates for this program.
Maybe it’s some software that if I update it,
I have to
change some code that I’ve developed.
So you can actually ignore it and then
choose all the ones that you actually want to ignore,
and then change it to Update automatically.
You can show the details,
which doesn't really show you much more
than what you get from the detailed view,
which is the installed version.
Plus you get the location of where the file is.
Very useful, if you go on More information
it's going to launch your browser
and it's going to give you information
about the patch and the vulnerability.
And you can see here, highly critical.
So that would be one that you would probably want to install
because again iTunes is a
application that directly interfaces with the internet so
it's particularly sensitive to needing to be updated.
You can look at History and see what has been
already installed or updated.
If you have a program that you want to be monitored but it isn't here,
then you can request from Secunia to
add that, and if you're lucky they may indeed add it.
You can scan again.
You'll see it'll start to download the latest definitions
and it will scan your system again.
And like I said, this can take a little bit of time
if you've got a large system.
You can see here it gives you a rating of –
here is 97% for
how up-to-date it believes my system to be.
And this says “Currently updating”,
so
let's change these settings to Download.
And you can see here, this is doing exactly what I mentioned,
in that it starts to pause
and you're not quite sure what it's doing here,
it's got a little timer, but
what it's doing is it's updating in the background
and you’ll get this little timer.
The best thing is just to leave it,
let it get on with what it's doing
and then eventually it will come back
and you'll be able to use the interface again.
Now, there are alternative tools and to this one,
to automate patching.
There is something called Appupdater,
there is FileHippo App Manager,
there's Ninite,
there’s Software Informer Client,
there's Software Update Monitor or SUMo,
but make sure you get the lite version of that because the non-lite version
comes with all the adware and bloatware.
There is Heimdal Free.
Not sure if I'm saying that correctly.
That comes from a security company, so that has a security focus
so that's worth a look.
You can also do automated driver updates
and there's a few pieces of software that do that.
Dumo is one example.
If you have your machine switched off any length of time,
or you're disconnected from the internet for any length of time,
before you start using your browser, or going on to the internet,
you need to check to see if you're up to date
with your patches first.
Get your system up to date first,
then use your browser,
then use your internet.
And if we look here,
it's actually conveniently
auto updated it for us
and we're on the latest version here.
On History,
we can see the update’s been made,
which is brilliant.
Now we're at 100%.