This one change could protect your systems from attack. So why don't more companies do it?

If there's one thing an organisation should do to protect its network from cyber attacks, it's turn on automatic updates for security patches so cyber criminals and other malicious hackers can't exploit vulnerabilities which have already been fixed.

The advice comes from the UK's National Cyber Security Centre – the cyber arm of GCHQ – which recommends applying security patches as soon as they're available as one of the simplest things an organisation can do to prevent intruders entering their networks.

"Patching is now so much easier and so much less risky than it was when we first started doing this stuff. If there's one thing that anyone out there wants to take away, turn on automatic updates, please – even if you're an enterprise, turn on automatic updates," said Dr Ian Levy, technical director of the NCSC, speaking at the cybersecurity agency's CYBERUK 2021 virtual event. "The sort of things we've seen over the last six to nine months like the big vulnerabilities and the big incidents, a lot of them come down to people not patching properly. And I know it's really boring but it is really important".