Outdated Software Exposes PC Users to Security Risks Says Report

January 23, 2019 3oliver

Based on a sample size of 163 million computers, 55% of all programs installed on personal computers running Windows are outdated according to an Avast report, exposing their users to security risks because of unpatched vulnerabilities.

Moreover, a top of the most out-of-date Windows programs installed on PCs around the world shows that in more than 94% of cases users who have installed Adobe Shockwave, VLC Media Player, and Skype on their computers haven’t updated them to the latest versions.

Outdated programs can also lead to system instability and data loss

The next in line are the Java Runtime Environment, 7-Zip, and Foxit Reader which are also present on their users’ PCs in the form of older, vulnerable versions that could allow would-be attackers to compromise the machines they run on.

Out of date Microsoft Office programs are another category of applications which put their users at risk, especially given that 15% of all Office installations are Enterprise 2007, an Office version Microsoft has stopped supporting since 2017 which means that it hasn’t received any bug fixes or security patches for almost two years.

Let’s be clear though, it’s not only about security issues seeing that outdated programs can also suffer or cause all sorts of incompatibility issues or software bugs that could eventually lead to data loss or serious system instability.

Out of date Windows builds found on millions of PCs

Avast also analyzed in their report the market share of various Windows versions and discovered that, although Windows 7 is now installed on 43% of all PCs and Windows 10 increased its market share to a respectable 40%, there still are a lot of users who use out of date versions of these operating systems.

To be more exact, 15% of all Windows 7 users still use the OS’ Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version even though Microsoft closed its support window during 2013, with no major security updates being delivered since then for this build.

When it comes to PCs running Windows 10, the situation is a little bit better with only 9% of the total number of users using this OS running an out of date version, but still counting in as millions of devices because of the operating system’s considerable market share.

The 1709 release from September 2017, used on 9% of all PCs worldwide, is still serviced with security updates, while all older versions are no longer supported, including everything from the initial 1507 (RTM) release to the Spring Creators Update 1703 from April 2017. Only educational users and businesses are receiving updates, all others should upgrade to the latest release, if possible. Combined, 9% of all Windows 10 operating systems used by users globally are out-of-date and potentially vulnerable.

Supported and outdated Windows 10 releases

According to Avast’s report, the data for their analysis was collected from roughly 163 million computers where Avast and AVG were running on in the form of anonymized datasets with the help of the Automatic Software Updater feature.

That data was combined with global statistics provided by the Statista market research portal to be able to describe the current state of the PC platform throughout 2018 as accurately as possible.