Secunia Software Inspector

Chances are, there are dozens of security vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited on your system. And it's not just broken Windows you need to be concerned with. Adobe Flash, Acrobat Reader, Apple Quicktime, Sun Java and a bevy of other third-party apps may host security vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited. Secunia Software Inspector can make the discovery process a bit easier by providing a free online scanner to alert you to vulnerable software. In a perfect world, we would never have to patch our systems. But it's not a perfect world, and security vulnerabilities affect a wide range of products. Not all these third-party addons provide automatic updates, and even those that do may not deliver the right update for the problem. And changes to the Microsoft update site make securing Windows a bit more difficult than it used to be.

Secunia Software Inspector provides a free online scan that provides a patch status for all supported applications on your system. It's a pretty long list of supported apps as well, including various versions of Adobe Reader, Flash, Firefox, Quicktime, AIM, iTunes, MSN Messenger, Windows, Thunderbird, Opera, RealPlayer, Skype, WinAmp, Yahoo Messenger, WinZip and ZoneAlarm.

Just click Start, let the scan run, and within moments Secunia Software Inspector provides a complete report of all that's wrong - or even right - with your system. A green checkmark beside a product name means that product is up-to-date. A red X means the product needs updating. And Secunia makes it doubly easy to update - providing links to the updates, step-by-step instructions, and details about the vulnerability.

Secunia Software Inspector is free, fast, and so intuitive to use there's simply no excuse for not keeping patches up to date.

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