Internet Explorer gets automatic updates

The threat for malicious software is increasing everyday and to protect the Windows customers from these threats, Microsoft has announced the automatic updates feature for Internet Explorer. By this feature, IE will be upgrade to the latest version automatically.

The blog post of Microsoft claims that from Brazil and Australia, in January 2012, the users of Windows Vista, Windows XP and also Windows 7 are facilitated with the update of IE provided they have turned on the automatic updating option in the Windows update. The automatic updates have become a norm as the greatest online threat as of now is the social engineering malware that targets the outdated software such as web browsers.

These automatic updates are also known as silent updates that display no windows or messages while the process is in progress and they are already been used by the rivals of IE like Chrome and Firefox. These ensure the users that they are using the newest versions of web browsers and has noticed huge improvements in internet security.

In October, Microsoft released the Security Intelligence Report in which 99% of the attacks during the period of January to June 2011 have come from the unpatched but well known vulnerabilities. The report also showed that 90% of those infections were due to the vulnerability exploitation which was due to a security update that was made for more than a year by the vendor of the software.

Internet Explorer needs more security retain its leadership position in the market as per the recent research done by StatCounter. The results of the research went favorable to Microsoft's IE which has obtained a strong percentage of 40.63% of the market share which is followed by Chrome with 25.7% and then by Firefox by 25.23%. These results are already discussed in our article dealing about the research on browsers.