We all know the importance of keeping the software on our critical systems properly updated, and one type of software that almost every computer runs (or should) is anti-virus software. We also know that sometimes updates can go horribly wrong – that’s why many IT departments test them in a non-production environment before rolling them out to all the computers on the network. Other times, though, overworked IT personnel don’t have time to test every update, or they mistakenly trust certain vendors’ updates and deploy them without testing, or the test environment doesn’t adequately simulate the production environment and problems crop up in the latter that didn’t show up in the former.
McAfee released an update last week that brought down thousands of Windows XP SP3 computers, including many at Intel, a large number at the University of Michigan Medical School and those at the Lexington, KY Police Department – just to name a few of the organizations that suffered at the hands of the update, which flagged a critical and familiar Windows system file, SVCHOST.EXE, as malware. McAfee apologized, but is an apology enough? Some of those whose work came to a crashing halt might not think so. Read more here: