Critical Security Patch Released – Was it too late?

Its been since October 2003 that Microsoft have started the tradition of releasing patches for its software products every second Tuesday of every month. The most recent of the series was June 9th which saw a record release of patches.

Looking on the bright side, quite a few patches have been fixed through this group release, but my question would be – how many users were vulnerable and prone to attacks before this date? Last Tuesday’s release had no less than 10 security patches including one for a critical hole found in Internet Explorer 8. This means that before this, everyone using Internet Explorer 8 was an easy prey for hackers. And what tells us that there aren’t more of such holes?

Battle of the Browsers!

One of the main elements for Internet users is the browser. Whilst before this term was synonymous with Internet Explorer, nowadays we have quite a few players in the field and people are spoilt for choice.

With Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox leading the field, what exactly are people looking for when choosing their default browser? What are the features that are necessary? and what security do these browsers give the users?

The answers to the above questions could be hundreds and mostly depends on what the user need from the browser and how he/she uses the Internet. If its a home user who only uses the browser to access webmail and check out the news, then simplicity is a must – but if its for a high end user who needs a number of toolbars, then flexibility would be the key!