Un-patched Systems Can Lead to Bank Fraud

An article featured in the November issue of an online small business journal recently caught my attention. This summer, I posted here touting the importance of patching third-party software, and this article addresses a relevant scenario: "Protecting your company's online banking account from fraud."

The article contains a lot of best-practice security tips for small- to medium-sized businesses, many of which the author quoted from various cyber security experts. One of these tips is to keep the software patched on the computers your company uses to access its online banking sites -- and not just the operating system. That goes for third-party software as well. Left un-patched, your computers are vulnerable to infection, which allows hackers to collect valuable financial data, including your company's online banking usernames and passwords. This is particularly important since some online banking sites, like Chase.com, use Java, which is not patched by the operating system.

The experts go on to say that the recommendation to keep system software up to date extends beyond just the online banking terminals. Businesses need to keep all of their systems well-patched with an effective patch management software.

It's easy to do that for the operating system and other Microsoft products with the built-in tools in Windows. However, if you want to stay on top of the rest of the software on your computers, you'll need an additional patch management solution to bridge the gap. SolarWinds Patch Manager, is a patch management tool for example, that integrates with the free Microsoft tools and provides an extensive catalog of third-party updates for a variety of software, including Java. With automated third-party patching, this is a patch management solution with which you'll never have to worry about a user accessing an online banking site with an outdated version of Java again.