Every quarter we review the popularity of our newsletter using analytics tools. We can see how many clicks occurred (we are always well above the industry average), where people clicked, and how long they stayed on a page. We also have the ability to see where the clicks originated geographically and what internet browser they used. As our newsletter has become more popular not only with our clients but also friends and family of our clients and other professionals, we have noticed a disturbing trend in the analytical data. High percentages of readers are using outdated versions of internet browsers. We have seen everything in between old versions of the popular browsers listed below up to the newest versions in:
Internet Explorer 8 released March 2009 (latest version Internet Explorer 11 released October 2013 but recently replaced with Microsoft Edge)
Google Chrome 42 released April 2015 (latest version Google Chrome 48 released January 2016)
Safari 8.0 released October 2014 (latest version Safari 9.0.3 released January 2016)
Mozilla Firefox v5.0 released June 2011 (latest version Mozilla FireFox v 44.0.2 released Feb 2016)
Why is this important? Older internet browsers are less stable, insecure, and slow. They are much more vulnerable to viruses, spyware, malware, and other security issues. Security of information is paramount in our firm and we execute best practices to protect client information on our end. Unfortunately, we cannot monitor the security practices of our clients on their personal and work computers. We hope that this blog post serves as a catalyst to our clients, family members, and other professional readers of our blog to update their internet browsers. We are not IT Professionals, and do not expect you to be either, but this is a simple step toward greater internet security that is easily implemented.
Here is a link to a website that will direct you to the location where you can update your internet browsers: http://browsehappy.com/
We hope this alert will help keep you safe as you browse the web!