Survey: Unpatched Windows OS on the Rise

Computers running unpatched Windows operating systems in the US rose to 9.8% in the first quarter, up from 6.5% a year ago, according to the Country Report released this week by Secunia Research@Flexera.

The data also revealed that while unpatched Windows OS was on the rise, the percentage of vulnerabilities that started in the OS in the US also grew to 36% in the first quarter, from 21% a year ago. These statistics may seem surprising, given that 81% of vulnerabilities in all products last year had patches available on the day they were disclosed, according to Flexera's annual Vulnerability Review.

"Frankly, if you wait two months to apply a critical Microsoft patch, you’re doing something wrong," says Kasper Lindgaard, senior director of Secunia Research at Flexera Software, in a statement.  "This time, we even had a warning in April that this could very likely happen, so businesses need to wake up and start taking these types of threats and risks seriously.  There is simply no excuse."

And for non-Microsoft programs, 14.1% remained unpatched on average in the first quarter, according to the report. During the first quarter, 56% of Apple iTunes 12.x. remained unpatched; 52% of Oracle Java JRE 1.8x / 8.x was unpatched; and 40% of VLC Media Player 2.x was unpatched, according to the Country Report.

Read more about unpatched operating systems here.