This Move By Google Spells Doom for Adobe Flash

In light of a recent zero-day vulnerability discovered with Adobe Flash, along with the wide adoption of the alternative rich media player HTML5, Google has put into motion plans to stop supporting Flash for its popular web browser, Google Chrome. By all accounts, this move may be the final nail in the coffin for the Internet stalwart, which means that your business should cease using it.

Ultimately, this move by Google is being made with the end-user experience in mind. HTML5 offers Chrome users a faster, more integrated rich media experience. It’s also a more secure option, as proven by the recent vulnerability with Flash that caused Adobe developers to frantically provide a patch to the majority of the world’s PCs. Reminder: be sure to update or uninstall Flash on your Windows OS if you haven’t yet done so.

For the casual Internet user, this transition away from Flash won’t be very noticeable. For example, the majority of mobile devices don’t even support Flash. Plus, over the years the Internet has been gradually moving away from Flash to HTML5, so it’s likely that you’re already utilizing HTML5 to a large extent.

However, with the Internet being the Internet, there are still a few major websites that Google Chrome will make an exception for after the end of support date, which should take place sometime during Q4 of 2016. These sites include:

• YouTube
• Facebook
• Yahoo
• Twitch
• Amazon
• And more

Although, it should be mentioned that even these websites will eventually dump Flash in favor of HTML5.

Now, all of this isn’t to say that you’ll never hear about Flash ever again. Some industries have a lot of tools and software built upon the product, like entertainment and educational websites. Therefore, Adobe will continue to have a market for Flash, and they’ll continue to update the software and provide fixes for it. However, even Adobe is recommending that content creators switch to a new platform at their earliest convenience.

The overall lesson here for your business is a reminder of why it’s important to stay on top of major software updates like this, or risk your computers becoming vulnerable. The way this works out is, once the hacker community learns of a vulnerability or that a popular software is now unsupported, they will write malware to specifically target computers still running it. Avoiding such a risk is easy enough; make sure you’re running software that’s up-to-date and supported by the developers. This especially is the case regarding any software that connects to the Internet.

Keeping up with software news and updates can be a chore that’s easy enough for many busy business owners to overlook, which is why Directive is here to help. With our remote monitoring and maintenance service, we can know at a glance what software is putting your company’s network at risk. We’ll then take proactive measures to protect your data, like automatically update the software, applying security patches, or even installing a more secure solution-- we can perform all of these tasks remotely.

This is just one way that Directive looks out for your business so that you don’t get caught in the ever-changing technological landscape. Call us at 607.433.2200 to take advantage of this service today!