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white hand holds a cell phone with a red screen reading DO I NEED TO UPDATE MY PHONE?
CyberSecurityUpdates & Improvements

Do I Need to Update My Phone?

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When it comes to business IT, you often think of the items that sit at your desk in the office: monitor, desktop, tower, laptop, VoIP phone, and so on. Often, we forget our cell phones. But do I need to update my phone?

Do I need to update my phone?

Whether it’s a dedicated business cell or your personal phone you use for work, it’s important to keep these items updated and running on the latest versions.

Why?

What you may not realize is that each update comes with more than just new features or a different visual look. This also includes bug fixes, software patches, and more. If you haven’t noticed any bugs or glitches, you may not feel inclined to upgrade.

  • You’ve got calls or messages you’re waiting on, and you can’t let the phone sit unavailable for an hour while it upgrades.
  • You’ll do it tonight when you get home (and forget for the fourth day in a row).
  • You don’t want to do it before bed because if it messes with your alarm, you won’t wake up for work on time.

That feeling is normal, but we need to actively combat that mentality. Keeping up to date on your tech will protect your business and your personal information. Because even if it’s your business phone, you’ve probably made a personal search on there, signed into Facebook once “for business purposes,” or ordered lunch to the office using your credit card on GrubHub.

Does my phone model matter for updates?

The quick answer: no.

In October, more than 50 new security fixes for the Android mobile operating system were included in the update. 50! This includes 10 vulnerabilities.

The most critical vulnerability in CVE-2021-0870 is related to a bug in an operating system component that can be used for remote code execution (RCE).

In layman’s terms, this vulnerability would allow a hacker to execute any code of their choice on your technology over LAN, WAN, or internet. With the internet becoming ubiquitous–let’s face it, we’re connected 24/7– RCE vulnerabilities’ impact grows rapidly. As a result, these are probably the most important kind of arbitrary code execution vulnerability.

But I have an iPhone…yeah, yeah, yeah. They are still vulnerable to attacks and need to be updated to stay protected.

Why?

Even if you are a die-hard Apple user, you likely still use other non-Apple programs. Those come with their own risks. Apple isn’t invincible, either, but that’s a discussion for another day.

You likely use Google Chome. Did you know Google patches critical vulnerabilities in its browsers every week? Here are just some of the updates Chrome made for Windows, Mac and Linux this year:

How do I know when to update my phone?

ThomasGuard has you covered. We patch every day, if it’s critical. If not, your tech gets updates on Saturday mornings. You just sip your coffee and relax.

Not a TG customer? It’s time we change that. Contact us today to get started.