Posts Tagged ‘Secunia’

It’s vital to keep all of your computer’s applications up-to-date and fully patched. It’s one of the most important things you can do to keep your computer safe from potential invasion, data loss and other generally nasty things. But with so many programs loaded on our PCs, how can we possibly keep up with all of the changes?

A new free tool from Secunia simplifies the process by scanning your PC, similar to a virus scan. Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector (PSI) works from a constantly updated database of software applications and checks the version you currently have against that list. When the scan is complete, PSI notifies you how many of your applications are unpatched or at their “end-of-life,” programs which are no longer being supported by their developers. You can download updates directly through the PSI interface where the program is aware of them.

The current version of PSI is 0.9 and is a release candidate, meaning it’s still in beta but getting close to its final release version. That said, it works well, catching several outdated plug-ins and applications on the New Tech Heroes HQ computer when I began using it in late December. Plus it’s free, which is a pretty good price. I did find it a bit challenging to update a couple of the older plug-ins, particularly ones that don’t remove their older version when they upgrade or patch (Flash and Reader were two culprits there – is there a reason why the older versions aren’t removed, Adobe?) and I had to go to Windows’ “Add or Remove Programs” control panel to manually remove the old software and then download the latest versions. But that’s less a problem with PSI then with the original software developers.

Overall, I highly recommend trying Secunia’s PSI. It’s another nice tool to help keep you one step ahead of the dark side of the computer universe.