Secunia Personal Software Inspector 3.0

It's one thing to write a program that does precisely what it's designed to do, but quite another thing to harden that program against attack by cybercrooks. Application and operating system vendors are constantly discovering security holes and releasing patches to fix them, but many users find installing the updates too much trouble. That's where the free Secunia Personal Software Inspector 3.0 comes in. This tool will check all of your installed programs, identify any that need updating, and, when possible, automatically perform the update.

When you launch this utility it immediately starts scanning your system for programs in its database, which includes programs from over 3,000 vendors. On finishing the scan it reports everything it found, both outdated programs and those that have all the latest patches.

The database also includes information that the Personal Software Inspector can use to automatically download and install some updates. You'll see it working away on those. As each automatic update finishes, the program moves into the list of programs that don't need an update.

Manual Updates
If any programs couldn't be updated automatically, you'll see a balloon notification pop up from Personal Software Inspector's tray icon. Naturally those programs will remain in the list of programs that require an update. When you click to update one of these, it may take you to a website where you can download the update, or it may inform you that the product is no longer supported.

It's best to uninstall programs when the maker no longer supports them. If you can't find an uninstall routine, you can flag it to be ignored in future scans. Such programs move to the very bottom of the list, with the notation "End of life." If you flag a supported program in the same way, it gets the notation "Insecure."

On several occasions in testing, the tool listed the latest version of a program as up to date but identified older versions as requiring an update. For example, the current Google Earth got a green flag, but the program claimed versions 3.x and 5.x needed an update. That seemed odd to me. Fortunately, right-clicking an item lets you view details of the files involved and optionally view those files in Windows Explorer. In several cases it turned out that Personal Software Inspector had just found a few orphaned files, not a whole installation of the older product. Once I deleted those files and rescanned, my security score improved.

Simple Settings
By default, the program launches at boot time and checks for programs needing an update. In this mode it keeps all your programs up to date with almost no effort on your part. You may choose to turn off these settings and launch it manually; just don't forget!

Some users of the previous version have complained about the removal of some advanced features. For my part, I'm happy to see the tool simply do its job in a way that any user can understand.

If you're hugely enthusiastic about having gotten your system's programs 100 percent up to date, you can click a button within the program to share your joy on Facebook or Twitter. There's also a button for direct access to the Secunia Community help forums.

Secunia Personal Software Inspector 3.0 takes the sting out of patch management for home users. With a tool like this available for free, there's no excuse for using outdated applications.

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