windows 11 – Page 3 – PossibleThreat Articles

How to keep your apps up to date in Windows 10 and 11

February 2, 2022 0 Comments Security, small and medium business, Windows, Windows 10, windows 11

Credit to Author: Ed Tittel| Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2022 03:00:00 -0800

Look around a typical Windows desktop. Whether it’s running Windows 10 or 11, chances are that it’s running at least a couple of dozen Windows applications (.exe files), and at least four dozen Microsoft Store apps. On my local fleet of 10 PCs, the range for applications is from a low of 24 to a high of 120; for Store apps, it ranges from 49 to 81. Such numbers are quite typical, if my online research is at all accurate.

In general, it’s considered good security practice to keep apps and applications up-to-date. Why? Because many updates involve security patches and fixes that block potential attacks and prevent unauthorized and unwanted access to applications and their data (and sometimes, the host OS and the PCs they run on). In this story, I will offer some tools to help you streamline this process, along with some instructions on how to put them to work to help you keep your apps and applications current and safe.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Patch Tuesday gets off to a busy start for January

February 2, 2022 0 Comments Microsoft, Security, small and medium business, Windows, Windows 10, windows 11

Credit to Author: Greg Lambert| Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2022 12:10:00 -0800

For this week’s Patch Tuesday, the first of the year, Microsoft addressed 97 security issues, six of them rated critical. Though six vulnerabilities have been publicly reported, I do not classify them as zero-days. Microsoft has fixed a lot of security related issues and is aware of several known issues that may have inadvertently caused significant server issues including:

Hyper-V, which no longer starts with the message, “Virtual machine xxx could not be started because the hypervisor is not running.”
ReFS (Resilient) file systems that are no longer accessible (which is kind of ironic).
And Windows domain controller boot loops.

There are a variety of known issues this month, and I’m not sure whether we’ll see more issues reported with the January server patches. You can find more information on the risk of deploying these latest updates with our helpful infographic.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Microsoft touts first PCs to ship natively with secure Pluton chip

February 2, 2022 0 Comments laptops, Microsoft, remote work, Security, small and medium business, Windows, windows 11

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2022 03:00:00 -0800

As organizations continue to wrestle with how to manage a hybrid workforce, security outside the corporate firewall continues to play a huge role in day-to-day IT operations.

Following the October release of Windows 11, which boasted features aimed at enabling hybrid work, Microsoft last week announced the first PCs with its Pluton chip-to-cloud security technology. The technology is aimed at securing the computers of remote workers and others.

At CES, Microsoft announced that Lenovo and chipmaker AMD have launched the first laptops — the ThinkPad Z13 and ThankPad Z16 — that come natively with the Pluton security chips. Pricing for the ThinkPad Z13 starts at $1,549, pricing for the ThinkPad Z16 starts at $2,099. Both laptops will be available in May and Lenovo said there is no additional cost associated with the Pluton chip inside.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Windows security in ’22 — you need more than just antivirus software

February 2, 2022 0 Comments Microsoft, Security, small and medium business, Windows, Windows 10, windows 11

Credit to Author: Susan Bradley| Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2022 06:10:00 -0800

Do you need antivirus in 2022 — especially when some options now come with a cryptominer built in?

Several antivirus vendors — some options free, others, paid — have begun bundling their antivirus products with software that generates virtual currency. Of all of the requirements for antivirus, using excess cycles on your computer to generate crypto-coins is not on my list of must-haves.

Recently, Krebs on Security noted that both Norton Antivirus and Avira have told users that versions of their respective software now include a cryptominer. While it’s not enabled by default, it still gives me pause; antivirus is supposed to protect us from such potentially unwanted software, and these two vendors are now including it in their wares.

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ComputerWorld Independent

How to manually update Microsoft Defender

February 2, 2022 0 Comments IDG Insider, Microsoft, Security, small and medium business, Windows, Windows 10, windows 11

Credit to Author: Ed Tittel| Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2022 03:00:00 -0800

Microsoft Defender is the built-in anti-malware package that’s included with modern Windows operating systems. It’s alternatively known as Windows Security (it shows up under Settings as Windows Security) or Windows Defender (sometimes with Antivirus at the end of the name, as in this Microsoft Docs page). But whatever you want to call it, for many Windows users, this tool is the go-to default for handling security on their PCs.

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(Insider Story)