Whenever you read about a security patch for Windows or any application, it's a fair bet that there's a reference to CVE somewhere in the notification. It's the database of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, and documents just about every known security-related problem. So whether you're patching a product from Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Oracle, Drupal or just about anyone else, the patch will be referenced in the CVE database.

To make sure that all of your important programs are up to date with critical security fixes, it's therefore a good idea to check the CVE database occasionally. You can search by product, vendor, date, and just about anything else. For example, all of this year's important fixes from Microsoft are available along with a description of the problem and a link to the Microsoft patch installer.

It's a very useful resource if you want to check that your PC is as secure as it can be, or whether there are any patches for the products you use which you haven't yet installed.  Read More

Recent versions of Windows have an inbuilt ability to handle file compression (commonly known as Zipping). You can compress one or more files by right-clicking its icon and choosing Send To, Compressed Folder. Equally, you can extract a .zip file archive with just a right-click.

However, Windows can't handle all of the well-known compression formats so the extraction facility sometimes fails. For example, if you download a file in .GZ format and attempt to decompress it from Windows, even Windows 10, it won't work.

For such tasks, I use a well-known compression tool called 7Zip, which was last updated just a few days ago. It is truly a wonderful product and is only around 1 MB to download. The file is malware-free according to VirusTotal and Web of Trust. Highly recommended.  Read More