F-Secure refreshes online PC Health Check

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 26 November 2009 01:16

Business IT - Security

When I tried Health Check, it initially reported that the antivirus software and firewall weren't up to date. I checked the product (NIS 2010), and it appeared that the security software had been updating itself at the time Health Check was running.

The same thing seemed to happen when I ran the check a second and third time - Symantec seems to be pumping out updates so frequently that practically any check will report that an update is required.

But eventually I managed to find an interval where NIS itself said no updates were available, but Health Check still insisted that an upgrade was available.

The next thing Health Check alerted me to was the absence of a backup service on the PC. No problem there - that computer isn't used for anything that needs backing up.

Step three reported some out of date software. I hadn't used Firefox for a few weeks, so it wasn't surprising that the latest version wasn't installed. But as soon as I launched the browser, it automatically updated itself.

Health Check claimed Java wasn't up to date, but checking for updates via the Java control panel told a different story. When I visited Sun's Java web site, it turned out that Health Check was right and my PC was one Java update behind.

Flash Player did need updating.

F-Secure's online checker also reported that Adobe Reader and Windows itself were up to date.

Finally Health Check suggested that the solution to my security software and backup problems was to install the appropriate F-Secure product. Was that the "upgrade" of my security software that Health Check had in mind? It would be somewhat misleading if that was the case.