Security Patching

Overview

The university's information security policy and the department's information security policy provides the guiding principles and responsibilities to ensure the Department’s security objectives are met. See IT policies

Your computer's operating system must be kept up to date by applying security and other patches that are released by the manufacturer or another third party suppliers.  

All patches are expected to be applied within 7 days of becoming available.  The see IT policy - enforced updating within 7days.

When the manufacturer stops supporting the operating system it should be upgraded to a supported operating system or if this is not possible (e.g. specialist equipment) alternative arrangements such as a separate firewall and network segregation must be used to protect it from the internet. Advice is available from IT Staff.

In addition to updating operating systems it is necessary to keep all other software applications patched up to date, in particular any software accessing the internet directly (e.g. web browsers) and opening files from the internet (e.g. office applications, pdf viewers etc.).  Most software provides a menu item to check for updates (e.g. Help->About).

Microsoft Operating Systems

Supported operating systems:  Windows 10 only specific versions (until 2025), Windows 11 
Unsupported operating systems:  Windows 8.1, 7, XP etc.

Your computer should have windows updates configured to check and install automatically and reboot promptly.

See security update releases at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/releaseNote/ 

Apple Operating Systems

Supported operating systems: usually taken to be the two most recent versions  (specific versions
Unsupported operating systems:  10.15 and earlier.

Mac OS X users should apply all Apple software updates [top left apple menu: software updates].

See security update releases at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 

Unix/Linux Operating Systems

Supported operating systems:  ask IT staff. Typically Ubuntu, Debian, Redhat.

Since many unix/linux operating systems are developed as open source, they evolve quickly and security flaws are introduced and patched frequently. Therefore IT staff have access to all linux systems on department network to monitor patching status.