Re: Is a Windows 98se computer more, or less, of a security threat with IE 5.5 (unused) & Firefox, or with IE 6.0 & latest updates (unused) & Firefox?

IE5.5 was only supported for as long as it was, because it was the base version for ME - otherwise it would have died on the vine in 2002 - your reasoning fails from that point on.

If FireFox is so good - why aren't you using it on the new machines as well? - it has more updates than IE6 does/did, and those updates require more work!!

Irrespective of whether IE is used as the browser, it is used a lot in the actual day-to-day use of Win ME particularly (and to a lesser extent in 98), and not updating it reduces the security of the whole OS, as well as the network.

This can be tolerated for a period - but should be minimised by the use of proper 'push' technology for patches allied with testing (or if you can't afford testing wait a week or two and research the NG's for problems before applying the patches by 'push') then it's a minimal job to ensure that all networked machines are updated. Note that I'm not sure whether Win98 clients are supported on Windows 2003 Server.

How many clients are you talking about here? how many are not networked?
--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2006, Windows)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.crashfixpc.com

http://tinyurl.com/6oztj

Please read http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm on how to post messages to NG's
"Nate Goulet" <askifyouwant@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:44b580cc.27434640@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks for the replies. It is appreciated.

IE6SP1 is considerably more secure than IE5.5 - and this holds even if it's not used as the browser.

I'd like to discuss this in more detail so I can have a better
understanding of what risks a machine would have exactly.

Since upgrading to IE6SP1 is a no-cash-cost option, I'm really at a loss to see what prevented you doing it when it made most sense to do so - two years ago.

Besides the performance issues on older pcs, the main reasons would be
that Microsoft is releasing critical updates for IE6 far too often for
a small company to handle. I'm the only IT person onsite, and i'm
only here a few days a week, part time hours. When i'm here, I have a
zillion things to do. The amount of time it would take to install
all of the updates if every pc had ie6 would be almost be a full time
job. Since i'm constantly reading about machines crashing or other
problems caused by installing Windows updates (especially from IE6),
files are backed up from clients prior to installing updates. This is
time consuming. We prefer to keep some files local, such as
Ms-Office files, should our server be down for some reason people can
still get some work done. Not to mention it would be a stain on the
Windows 2000 server to keep everyone's files saved on the network.

I bring this up to the group to help me make a good decision. I'd
certainly be in favor of replacing all the older pcs, and increasing
my hours if necessary, but small companies with minimal budget can
only afford so much. Our older systems meet our current demands just
fine. I have seriously been pushing for a new server too.

As was discussed on the group since IE6 came out and with several
MSCEs I know, our way of thinking was that if IE 5.5 were a serious
enough security risk, Microsoft would be offering just as many updates
as they do for IE6, or discontinue support altogether. That might
finally be the case this month. We also were recommended to not use
IE at all, and use FireFox for virtually everything with a couple
exceptions where required. Those exceptions are on newer machines,
with IE6 and the latest updates.

Now that it has been a couple years, I have to say we've had virtually
no problems (keeping my fingers crossed). We do keep up-to-date
anti-virus software, have e-mail scanned server-side anti-virus, have
strict policies on how to open e-mail safely, etc. We had far more
problems when people were actually using IE, even when it was the
latest version.

Please discuss & advise. I'm opened minded, and really want to have a
good idea why we should do things differently, if necessary.




.

Relevant Pages

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