Secunia Personal Software Inspector version 1.0 released

Tony Austin
Thursday, 04 December 2008 14:31

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft users are used to regular (often weekly) updates for fixing functions and security of  Windows, Microsoft Office, and other software. Other software providers — commercial, shareware, open source — usually provide some sort of mechanism for automatic or manual checking for updates and installing them.

Importantly, not all software providers offer such mechanisms. Many users have no idea about the overall status of software o their PCs. Are new versions or patches/fixes available? How do I get them for some of the obscure software on my system? If they're security fixes, will I get them applied in time to prevent exploits?

This is where Secunia PSI steps in, and in my opinion does a good job. It provides you with regular and consistent awareness of and control over the patching a wide range of Windows software. That is, it prods and nudges you and gets you to improve your software housekeeping that you might otherwise put off mañana (and we all know that tomorrow never comes).

PSI is a very lightweight utility, with a download size of only 0.5 Mb, and is available in English, Danish and German. It installs quickly, sits unobtrusively in the Windows system tray continually monitoring for threats, popping up warnings and information about software installations/uninstallations.

You start off a scan whenever it pleases you, and it works its way through your system examining a wide range of Windows programs and determining if each one is missing important security patches and updates.

Click on the adjacent thumbnail to see the results of a recent scan on my own system. Here's a brief explanation of the numbered points.

Point (1) shows that I have aback-level version of WinZip installed, which I know about but rarely use and so I'm not at all concerned about this, but at least PSI keeps reminding me about the potential security exposure from WinZip 7.

Points (2) and (3) relate to Adobe Systems software that I have now removed. I've explained that I don't use Adobe Reader any more (see Foxit Reader 3.0 released, now it's even easier to read PDF documents) and Adobe AIR was there for an old test and not used any more anyway.

Points (4) and (5) warn me about version 2 of Firefox and OpenOffice being out of date, but I was about to upgrade to the latest verion (release 3) of both of these anyway, and have done so now.

Point (6) reminds me that I have multiple older versions of Java Runtime Environment installed (there are some technical reasons for this), and I've subsequently updated to the jazzy new version anyway (see Sun releases a major Java runtime and SDK update - Java SE 6 Update 10).

Regarding point (7), I'm not too sure why I even have WinPcap on  my system, but at least I know that it's a back-level version!

Point (8) is a column showing Secunia's threat rating level (amber and red indicate that some action should be taken).

Point (9) is a beauty. If you click on the "download" icon in a given row, you are transferred to the download function (usually a web page) for obtaining the current release of the product in the two of the report, obviating a painful hunt to find how to get and apply the update. And point (10) takes you to the Secunia forum where tou may find out more about issues with the product.

Finally, point (11) is a chart that builds up over time to show status of vulnerabilities over time on your system,

I heartily recommend that you install and keep actively using Secunia PSI.