Automatic Updates are a must

For regular followers of our advice, you will know we must touch on this subject at least once a month, as it’s so important to the health and well-being of your computer systems.

This article will also demonstrate, that no one is perfect, which when you read on, which includes ourselves…

Let’s begin with a story, grab a cushion and gather around… 

Earlier this week we were doing some installation preparation work at our office, where we do as much of the work as we can before we take whatever the item is to the customer’s business. We were setting up a new wireless access point (for the techies reading this, it was a Unifi AP) and we were struggling to do what we needed to do. As ever in these situations, I asked one of our team to take a look at it, for a second opinion. They quickly concluded, and asked the question (and I’m paraphrasing here) “Is our network controller software up-to-date?”

It was a perfectly sound question, and one where you’d assume it was, but at the same time, you should never make assumptions, so we did go and take a look at the software we were trying to use to configure this device.

Sure enough, our network software was a few versions behind!

The first thing that we did was manually update this particular software to the latest version. As soon as did this, we were able to configure the device that we were trying to set up in the first place, as it started talking nicely with the software, now that it was on the latest version.

Once we solved the problem in hand, we then went back to our network software to check the Automatic Updates settings, to stop this from happening again in the future. They were turned off/set to manual. We configured them to be automatic for new versions of the software going forward (only officially supported versions, not previews or beta versions).

There are many benefits to having the updates applied automatically. It will ensure you’re always running the latest software, which will contain all the latest security patches. You’ll get access to all the latest features within that software. And, in this specific scenario, it will ensure it works with all the latest devices.

Some of you may be thinking about the recent CrowdStrike problems, where an update was rolled out which caused computers to stop working when they were started up – and whilst the disruption this caused was huge, the advice remains unchanged, you should have automatic updates on, wherever you’re able to turn it on.

We hope that conveys how important it is to have Automatic Updates on. If you’ve not got Automatic Updates set up on your various computers and software, please spend a few minutes today checking this to ensure your computer systems and devices remain as secure and productive as they can be.

Gavin Moorhouse is the owner of Lucid Computer Solutions, an IT Services business based in Worcestershire. He just checked that his Linux laptop was running the latest software version, before posting this article.