A small minority of users - as few as one in 20 - is running fully-patched Windows PCs.

Just five per cent of newly-registered users of an online security inspection service Secunia came out with a clean bill of health, while more than 40 per cent have at least 11 insecure applications installed.

The data is based on scans of 20,009 computers whose users recently installed Secunia's freely available software inspection tool. Secunia claims a total user base of more than 200,000 users for its free Secunia PSI tool. A survey of a different sample set of Secunia PSI recently discovered that one in five software apps installed on computers are insecure or out of date.

The Danish security firm said stats from its service show users are struggling to keep their PCs up to date. "Patching a PC is as important as running anti-virus and a personal firewall," said Thomas Kristensen, Secunia's CTO. ®

More comments…

Related stories

Microsoft plugs 'critical' hole in Vista (8 January 2008)
RealPlayer users warned over unpatched vuln (3 January 2008)
One in five apps are insecure (21 December 2007)
Apple keeps critical security fixes to itself (15 December 2007)
Software maker releases the hounds on security vuln reporter (6 December 2007)
Exploit broker aims marketing machine at Unix app crack (17 November 2007)
Windows update offers defence against shell bug (14 November 2007)
Zero-day bug hangs over Oracle database (9 November 2007)
Fight malware by upgrading to Vista, urges MS (23 October 2007)