Happy Monday to our valued Weston clients and friends!

Our usual Monthly newsletter will be published later this week (sign up if you haven’t already), but we needed to make sure we got this news out.

As you may have heard, a security vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft Internet Explorer which affects basically every version that is out there today. Microsoft is currently working on a patch to fix the issue and we will roll that out as soon as they release it. Here is an article from Forbes with a basic rundown of the vulnerability. You can read the technical details from Microsoft here. For extremely technical details from the folks who discovered the vulnerability, you can find that here.

There are not too many details being released and we’re still combing through everything. From what we understand, the vulnerability is exploited when you access a website that has been infected with malicious code. This means you should be extra vigilant in clicking on links that you receive from people that you don’t know, or that just don’t seem right.

The other options include using a different web browser or disabling Adobe Flash, but we also know that that isn’t a simple option for many businesses that rely on both of those products. If you decide to use a third-party browser, make sure it’s fully up-to-date. If you decide to disable Flash in Internet Explorer, this web site explains how to change the allow-lists so certain sites to run it (the directions are for Internet Explorer 8, but the general procedure still applies).

We will update you as soon as Microsoft has released a patch to fix this issue.

For our CompleteCare or Essentials clients: If your workstations are being monitored by us, we will roll out the patch automatically via our tools as soon as it has been released and tested.

A reminder, if you have Windows XP, Microsoft will not be releasing any more patches, and we recommend you upgrade to Windows 7 as soon as possible.

Thanks for choosing Weston!

Update on 5/2: Microsoft has released a patch, and decided to patch XP as well. Head over to Windows Update to update or read more on Microsoft’s support site. For our CompleteCare and Essentials clients, we’re testing the patch right now internally and will push it out as soon as we know it’s not going to break anything.