Patch Tuesday March 2016

Patch Tuesday

Patch Tuesday March 2016: more security patch madness for your small business. Time to stop smelling the spring flowers and start updating your computers.

Android Agony

Google released a slew of security patches affecting Android version 4.4 and up. Most of them are rated critical or high security threat.

The only problem is that the hardware manufacturers are slow pushing these updates out to their phones if at all.

More details on the Android Security Agony.

Microsoft Mayhem

Windows updates and Office for Mac updates blossomed today. Thirteen in total.

It’s really critical to keep your Office software up to date as it is being favoured as a target by hackers right now.

One of the targets is an oldie but a goodie: malicious macros for Word. Remember not to open attachments from strangers. Absolutely do not enable macros.

More on the Microsoft updates.

Apple

After all the excitement last month, only one patch from Apple this month for Apple TV. Good opportunity to get caught up on last month’s patches for OS X and iOS devices if you haven’t done so yet.

In other Apple security news, hackers have created the first ransomware that specifically targets Mac OS X computers. I hope Apple will deal with this in next month’s updates.

Adobe Agony

Rumours abound that there will be yet another hot Flash update soon. But just in case you missed updating an Adobe products there are updates for Adobe Reader and Adobe Digital Editions.

WordPress Whirlwind

No update for the WordPress core this month but version 4.5 is now in beta and expected to be released in April. More details on WordPress 4.5 with screenshots.

Several popular plugins were updated this month including Akismet spam filter, iThemes Security, WordFence, BackupBuddy and Yoast SEO.

Be sure to login to WordPress dashboard and run the updates as soon as possible.

An ounce of patching is better than a pound of malware.