D2 (DONE)

In this essay I will be evaluating the risks involved with installing or upgrading software and explaining the best ways to minimise the risks.  With all installations and upgrades there will be problems if the user does not follow instructions or if the vendor of the software has released it too early. These problems can bring businesses to their knees and lose them thousands of pounds in a short amount of time, depending on scale.

A definite possibility after installing software is that the files data that was previously on the device is wiped and gone forever unless it's been backed up. This can happen from bugs in the new software or just the incompatibility between the software and hardware. The loss of data can be detrimental to a business or even just an average user, they can be very important project files or priceless sentimental pictures or sound clips. The loss of files will cause the computer system to be useless because there is nothing on there to work on, business wise.

Compatibility issues mean that the software is not at the same level as the computer in terms of technological advancements or it means that the two (software and hardware) are made my competing or differing companies so will not work together.  In most technological compatibility issues it is the users computer that isn't able to run the software because it is too old, and if it is able to run the software, the little RAM it has will not be able to run the software at it's maximum effectiveness. On the other hand you have software that has become outdated that used to do the job but better alternatives have been released and this is a common reason for installing or upgrading software. Ways to avoid having compatibility issues include reading the specifications needed to run the software, which is present on almost every vendors website, I know this from my previous first hand experience whilst researching different Anti Virus software. Businesses can also have 'test computers' which emulate the specifications of their common computer system, they can then run the software and see if there are any side effects in regards to computer speed or effectiveness.

There are also cases where software can claim to be legitimate when really they are carrying viruses to intrude your computer and steal information. The advertising will lure customers in and offer extremely good prices compared to other softwares. The program might even do the job that it is meant to do but will run in the background leaving the user clueless. The way to reduce the risk of this happening would be to only visit established websites when downloading software, if this isn't possible then another to check the legitimacy would be to read reviews and comments about the product. Negative responses would obviously mean avoiding that particular software.

Updates can be released too early without being properly tested, this has scope to release bugs onto the market and potentially take out a whole computer network, if a business were to adopt the new update. Hackers will be able to exploit these bugs in some cases meaning that they can access classified documents. Anti virus software sometimes has this aspect in their range of cover so for most part this would be covered, especially via firewall. Anti virus software also has a database of viruses so should be able to deal with this kind of threat.

Using a computer when an update is installing is likely to slow the computer down and make the update take longer to download. From a business perspective, the downtime this has could lose them money so instead of trying to work and update, they would need to weigh up the opportunity cost by leaving work stations bare compared to working through it. Also, using a computer during an update could increase the risk of it failing and having to restart the operation again.