Twenty years of software updates
In the beginning, software ran mostly on a smart server dumb terminal networked or entirely on a local machine. If there was a defect, it was that the given program wouldn’t run. Once desktops, laptops, mobile phones and even physical devices such as refrigerators started interconnecting via the internet, a software defect could open the device to an attack or shut down a life-critical system. The very real need to stay on top of software updates has been escalating every day.
In the early 2000s, when computer malware began as a few innocent viruses before morphing into full-on malevolent worms, the software giants such as Microsoft (but by no means limited to Microsoft) denied responsibility. There was significant push back with vendors saying that compromise was only possible in only a limited number of scenarios -- almost as though the end user was responsible. Increasingly, though, it became clear that maybe the software itself could be responsible for some of the malicious activity on the early internet. And maybe the software industry needed to take that seriously.