During an investigation on 20,000 random windows PC’s the Danish company Secunia discovered that more than 98 percent were missing one or more software patches. These software patches ensure that vulnerabilities are repaired. Furthermore they discovered that almost 50% of PC's contained at least 11 programs that are susceptible to malicious attacks. In most cases, the Windows operating system itself is up-to-date because this is greatly simplified by Windows Update. In most third-party applications such a mechanism often lacks, and they are therfore not updated.