windows 11 – Page 3 – Computer Security Articles

Trouble with Windows? You have support options

June 21, 2022 admin Security, small and medium business, windows, Windows 10, windows 11

Credit to Author: Susan Bradley| Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2022 05:15:00 -0700

So, you finally got around to installing a Windows update from Microsoft, and there’s a problem. Where do you go for support and assistance?

Short answer: it depends.

If you are an Enterprise customer and have an issue with your work computer — whether in the office or remote — there should be a designated IT administrator or help desk for you. You either call the help desk or open a trouble ticket and someone gets back to you. Often, they have tools to remotely connect to your computer and see what’s going on. If the issue is so serious your machine can’t be fixed, they’ll deploy a new computer or reimage your PC using tools such as Autopilot to deploy a fresh copy of Windows for you.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Windows 11: Should you bypass the hardware block?

May 31, 2022 admin small and medium business, windows, Windows 10, windows 11, Windows Security

Credit to Author: Susan Bradley| Date: Tue, 31 May 2022 12:55:00 -0700

If you’re like most PC users, your current computer can’t run Windows 11. Microsoft has placed a line in the hardware sand to ensure that only modern machines with certain specifications that harden security can run Windows 11.

Well, sort of. The company provides a workaround, as I’ll discuss in a moment. Whether you should take advantage of this loophole to upgrade PCs (whether yours or your users’) to Windows 11 is the question.

First, if you want to know if a computer can run Windows 11, you can use the PC Health Check app, Microsoft’s diagnostic tool. But if your PC doesn’t support Windows 11, Microsoft’s app doesn’t do a great job of explaining why. Instead, I recommend using either the Windows 11 Requirements Check Tool from ByteJams.com or WhyNotWin11, available on Github. Both tools provide granular detail about why a machine won’t run Windows 11. On my personal laptop at home, for instance, the processor can’t support hardware for hypervisor enforced code integrity, nor does Windows 11 like the graphics display.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Just what does Windows 11 bring to the table?

May 9, 2022 admin Security, Windows 10, windows 11

Credit to Author: Susan Bradley| Date: Mon, 09 May 2022 07:43:00 -0700

The other day, my Dad — my bellwether for technology — mentioned in passing that he’d read online that Windows 11 shouldn’t be used and that the operating system wasn’t being adopted.

Dad had a point. He’s more of an Apple user now — I have him on my phone plan to support his tech needs, he uses an iPhone and has an iPad. As his needs have changed, his reliance on Windows devices has decreased. In fact, his current Windows needs involve applications not on the Apple platform. (And because he’s a standalone user, not a domain user, many of the advances in Windows 11 having to do with authentication won’t be available to him.)

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ComputerWorld Independent

Windows 11 — we haven’t seen anything, yet

April 6, 2022 admin microsoft, Security, windows 11

Credit to Author: Rob Enderle| Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2022 10:24:00 -0700

Disclosure: Microsoft is a client of the author.

Microsoft this week had an analyst event about Windows 11 and a variety of productivity, management, and security features the company has planned. Over the last couple of years, Microsoft has aggressively improved both Windows and Office 365, but the big change ahead is the potential blend of Windows with Windows 365. We’ll see that start by the end of the year. The end game should be what appears to be a Windows desktop that integrates so well with the cloud that it can, when necessary, seamlessly switch between instances to comply with company policy, assure security, and provide recourse on automatic demand from Azure Cloud.

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ComputerWorld Independent

How to keep your apps up to date in Windows 10 and 11

February 2, 2022 admin Security, small and medium business, windows, Windows 10, windows 11

Credit to Author: Ed Tittel| Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2022 03:00:00 -0800

Look around a typical Windows desktop. Whether it’s running Windows 10 or 11, chances are that it’s running at least a couple of dozen Windows applications (.exe files), and at least four dozen Microsoft Store apps. On my local fleet of 10 PCs, the range for applications is from a low of 24 to a high of 120; for Store apps, it ranges from 49 to 81. Such numbers are quite typical, if my online research is at all accurate.

In general, it’s considered good security practice to keep apps and applications up-to-date. Why? Because many updates involve security patches and fixes that block potential attacks and prevent unauthorized and unwanted access to applications and their data (and sometimes, the host OS and the PCs they run on). In this story, I will offer some tools to help you streamline this process, along with some instructions on how to put them to work to help you keep your apps and applications current and safe.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Patch Tuesday gets off to a busy start for January

February 2, 2022 admin microsoft, Security, small and medium business, windows, Windows 10, windows 11

Credit to Author: Greg Lambert| Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2022 12:10:00 -0800

For this week’s Patch Tuesday, the first of the year, Microsoft addressed 97 security issues, six of them rated critical. Though six vulnerabilities have been publicly reported, I do not classify them as zero-days. Microsoft has fixed a lot of security related issues and is aware of several known issues that may have inadvertently caused significant server issues including:

Hyper-V, which no longer starts with the message, “Virtual machine xxx could not be started because the hypervisor is not running.”
ReFS (Resilient) file systems that are no longer accessible (which is kind of ironic).
And Windows domain controller boot loops.

There are a variety of known issues this month, and I’m not sure whether we’ll see more issues reported with the January server patches. You can find more information on the risk of deploying these latest updates with our helpful infographic.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Microsoft touts first PCs to ship natively with secure Pluton chip

February 2, 2022 admin laptops, microsoft, remote work, Security, small and medium business, windows, windows 11

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2022 03:00:00 -0800

As organizations continue to wrestle with how to manage a hybrid workforce, security outside the corporate firewall continues to play a huge role in day-to-day IT operations.

Following the October release of Windows 11, which boasted features aimed at enabling hybrid work, Microsoft last week announced the first PCs with its Pluton chip-to-cloud security technology. The technology is aimed at securing the computers of remote workers and others.

At CES, Microsoft announced that Lenovo and chipmaker AMD have launched the first laptops — the ThinkPad Z13 and ThankPad Z16 — that come natively with the Pluton security chips. Pricing for the ThinkPad Z13 starts at $1,549, pricing for the ThinkPad Z16 starts at $2,099. Both laptops will be available in May and Lenovo said there is no additional cost associated with the Pluton chip inside.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Windows security in ’22 — you need more than just antivirus software

February 2, 2022 admin microsoft, Security, small and medium business, windows, Windows 10, windows 11

Credit to Author: Susan Bradley| Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2022 06:10:00 -0800

Do you need antivirus in 2022 — especially when some options now come with a cryptominer built in?

Several antivirus vendors — some options free, others, paid — have begun bundling their antivirus products with software that generates virtual currency. Of all of the requirements for antivirus, using excess cycles on your computer to generate crypto-coins is not on my list of must-haves.

Recently, Krebs on Security noted that both Norton Antivirus and Avira have told users that versions of their respective software now include a cryptominer. While it’s not enabled by default, it still gives me pause; antivirus is supposed to protect us from such potentially unwanted software, and these two vendors are now including it in their wares.

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