It's never been more important than now to keep Windows and Office 'patched'.  Applying the latest critical updates and service packs is essential maintenance on all PCs, let me explain ...

This mornings emails brought a new raft of warnings.  Today the thread is called "Duqu", recently we've had "Stuxnet" and "Cornficker", and a number of related variations. These imaginatively named threats are viruses.  They attack vulnerabilities in Office and Windows amongst other things.  Stuxnet and Duqu feature Iran quite heavily and are rumoured to have infected nuclear plants over there - hopefully that's just rumour!  I've heard theories about their origins that sound more like Holllywood scripts than any reality I can imagine, but nevertheless, these viruses exist and they will attack your computer - it is just a question of when.

How they work varies.  Most of these have a number of 'attack vectors' meaning that they can spread in different ways - emails, infected files, from websites or USB, or a combination of several of these.  Duqu seems to be delivered either as part of an email or embedded in a Word document - so it's something that you download onto your PC yourself - essentially a trojan horse.  While your antivirus may help, the fact that you actually chose to load it will often override that protection.   In that case having the latest Windows and Office updates on your PC is your best defence.  One of the challenges is that these vandals are working all the time to inflict their damage on your PC.  But your version of Office might be several years old - putting you behind the game to start.

The best answer is keep your Windows and Office updates applied all the time, along with your antivirus.  While it's not 100%, it is 99.999% - the best you can reasonably do.  Many of our clients are on Kinetics KARE, where our Core Fundamentals, Proactive and Total KARE plans all guarrantee that these will be kept up to date on all your covered machines.  These clients need not worry - we look after it for them!