Cyber Scotland Week - patches are a vital part of being cyber secure

As part of Cyber Scotland Week, let's take a look at software patches and why they're important at work and at home.

Software Companies and the manufacturers of computer devices will release software updates regularly through the lifetime of software, until that point when they decide their product is no longer able to be supported.

These updates will often contain new features, fixes for bugs and performance improvements. They will often also contain security patches and new security features, both of which are important to install.

Patches matter because they fix known flaws that emerge in the lifetime of a product, making that product vulnerable. When these vulnerabilities emerge, attackers can use them to break in and compromise your devices. Applying new security features make it harder for attackers to succeed, and reduce the risk of attackers stealing data, locking up your files or preventing your computer from working.

Patching is a very important part of cyber security. Your workstations and laptops are patched by IT while you work using automated systems. However, occasionally IT may need to apply a patch or fix manually although this is unusual. A lot of work takes place in the background to ensure that our systems are kept up-to-date and secure and not all of this is automated. IT staff sometimes work out of hours to patch larger systems while keeping service disruption to a minimum.

You may notice that your workstation or laptop restarts automatically, this is sometimes necessary to fully apply a patch.

Microsoft issues patches every second Tuesday of the month (Patch Tuesday) but may issue an emergency patch at other times to fix something urgent.

For your home systems, you should set your software (Windows, Apple or other) to update automatically and restart them when necessary. Your programs should also be set to automatically update too, especially important programs e.g. anti-malware. If they don't automatically update, then they'll usually remind you when an update is available.

Keeping your home systems up to date will help to protect you from cyber-attacks.

It is always a good idea to have backups of your data, and before you update is an ideal time to do this.

We have a sophisticated backup system in use for the Council that is designed to make sure that we can recover data if necessary, and to protect it from attackers.

At home, you should also back your data up whether to the cloud or to a separate external hard disk that you unplug after your backup is complete (to protect it from attack if the computer is compromised). Data is valuable which why it is a target for criminals.