They aren't giving people much time to protect themselves anymore

[DrMDJ]

Not that it's news to any of us I guess, but things have gotten rediculous.

Study: Unpatched PCs compromised in 20 minutes

[CataclysmCow]

Not trying to be dismissive (or additive), but a company that I used to do contract work for had to make an addition to their security policy stating that no computer could be put "online" until it was thouroughly patched. This was a result from a study on the IT dept that said that an unpatched OS would be attacked within 4 minutes on average. I looked over their results and it seemed to indicate that their tests showed that a good percentage of the "attacks" were from the intranet.

Two years ago I worked a job where I had to dig through piles of log printouts. The vast majority of unrequested traffic was RPC related worms. It's amazing that these things are still "alive" out there.

Personally I think this "20 minute" period is a huge understatment.

[DrMDJ]

You could be right about the time being even shorter now CataclysmCow. If it isn't even MS (as the article says) thinks it's gonna get worse (shorter) very soon.

[J A L]

Had a computer I didn't patch before getting on the internet via dialup, get the sasser worm in five mins!

Made patch cd's now for all o/s's at a great time expense. few hours at least each. getting the updates downloaded individually takes time. Not to mention they keep changing so new ones have to be made from time to time!