Murphy's Law on not patching your PC with Microsoft Security Updates

One of my fellow MVPs attended a trade show convention, which took place during the recent Sasser attacks.  Unfortunately, one vendor encountered a “worse case scenario”.  They were unable to conduct product demonstrations due to an infection by the Sasser Internet Worm.  In fact, they required 38 security updates, so they most likely had only an “out-of-the-box installation” of Windows XP with no security updates.

Murphy's Law states that “If something can go wrong, it will and at the worst possible time“.   The PC was eventually restored to good working order.  However, the sign below was posted on it while it was offline.  The vendor suffered embarrassment and missed opportunities to demonstrate their product offerings to potential customers.

This unfortunate example provided a "Lessons Learned" on the value of security updates.   Users and even IT professionals sometimes take short cuts in the best security practices or they choose to stay uninformed on the  importance of security updates.  The Microsoft security update is the most important thing you can do to keep your PC secure and in good working order. 

The Windows Update link is provided below to check for critical security updates.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsupdate