75% of PCs Not Patched Against Meltdown and Spectre, Companies Say

[LASER_oneXM]

Survey shows organizations not in a rush to patch

Intel promised to release Meltdown and Spectre security patches for 90 percent of PCs by the end of this week, but it turns out that despite the updates being available in the wild, organizations aren’t very keen on securing their computers.

A survey conducted by Barkly reveals that less than 26 percent of the systems managed by IT and security pros have received the Meltdown and Spectre updates, with only 4 percent of the respondents saying that all their machines got them.

And it’s getting worse. No less than 46 percent of the organizations that were part of the survey said they weren’t aware that in order to deploy Meltdown and Spectre patches antivirus solutions needed to be compatible and a registry key was required to deal with it.

“Only 42 percent of respondents say their AV vendor has notified them regarding their product's compatibility with the patch. Nevertheless, 64 percent say they were able to determine their AV was compatible. 6 percent reported experiencing system crashes due to the update,” Barkly says.

The antivirus fiasco

On the other hand, there are organizations who were advised by their antivirus vendors to add the registry key but they didn’t. No less than 59 percent of the respondents “expressed at least some concern the action might cause issues.

Microsoft has also published a Meltdown and Spectre PowerShell script to help system administrators determine whether patching is required or not, but only 41 percent of the IT pros said they heard about it. Eventually, 80 percent of the respondents claimed the update process hasn’t been entirely clear, and this is one of the reasons many systems are left unpatched.