Should i update firmware

How easy it is to flash the firmware depends on the type of device and the kindness of the manufacturer. ImgBurn is a free app that burns ISO files to disc.

Reboot your computer with the newly burned CD in the optical drive; the firmware-flashing process should start immediately. Unfortunately, not all manufacturers give you something that easy to use. Once you prepare the floppy, you reboot your PC with the disk in your floppy drive, run the flash utility, and then remove the floppy and reboot again.

Select your flash drive as the device and pick the option to format it as a FAT32 file system. The flash drive is ready to boot, but is your PC ready to boot it? To find out, leave the flash drive plugged in while you reboot your PC. Lack of Signed Firmware: Based on recent industry and Eclypsium research , it is not uncommon to find components within devices that do not verify that firmware is properly signed before updating or running firmware code.

This means that these components have no way to validate that the firmware loaded by the device is authentic and should be trusted. This allows an attacker to insert a malicious or vulnerable firmware image, which the component would blindly trust and run. The private key must never be stored on the device itself and must be verified on the silicon or by an MCU that is responsible for writing to the shared flash. They should choose vendors that only use signed firmware in all components.

Lack of a Common Vulnerability Taxonomy: Organizations that integrate firmware into their overall vulnerability management programs will often notice that many of the tools and standards available for software are not available for firmware. Vulnerability scans rarely extend to firmware vulnerabilities. The same issues plague the industry itself. For example, while firmware vulnerabilities are included as CVEs, they often are not assigned Common Weakness Enumeration CWE codes, which developers and security teams use to understand the underlying weakness of a vulnerability.

Intel and other industry forces are increasingly pushing to extend the CWE concept to include hardware issues. Increased standardization would assist researchers as they communicate findings and also help organizations understand the impact of a vulnerability in their environment so they can make informed decisions about prioritization. Solutions and Recommendations: Such large industry-level challenges will naturally require the coordination of many organizations and vendors.

As a result, such changes are likely beyond the scope of any individual enterprise. Lack of Firmware and Hardware Inventory: Visibility remains one of the most fundamental challenges for organizations when it comes to firmware and hardware.

Teams often lack the basic insight into what firmware is in their devices, if the firmware contains vulnerabilities, and if there are updates available. This problem is greatly magnified in organizations with staged hardware refresh cycles where multiple different hardware platforms are in use.

While some manufacturers provide better visibility into firmware than others, the variety of device types, vendors, and underlying components can make it almost impossible to keep track of all firmware in an enterprise. Centralized, regular scanning of devices in the environment provides a consistent way to know which devices need to be updated. Difficult Update Processes: Traditionally, firmware updates have required a more manual effort from IT and security teams as compared to software updates.

This naturally creates a higher barrier to updating and ultimately results in an unprotected attack surface. Additionally, firmware updating can often require coordination between different functional teams within an organization. As mentioned before, security teams may champion an update based on a critical vulnerability, but the actual process of applying the updates may fall to an IT team.

Meanwhile, teams can encounter other complications during firmware updates, such as prompts for BitLocker recovery keys due to the PCR0 changing. While some operating systems and OEMs provide the option to suspend BitLocker during an update, not all do. Solutions and Recommendations: Firmware encapsulation provides teams with a much more automated approach to firmware updates that follows much the same model that organizations use for maintaining their operating systems and software.

Organizations will need to have visibility into their devices to understand which components can be updated via encapsulation and which will require a more manual approach. In either case, teams must still prepare for testing firmware updates to find potential problems before updates are rolled out broadly.

Organizations should be aware of tools and capabilities encapsulating multiple firmware updates and start integrating them into their firmware management strategy. They also may want to consider the availability of firmware encapsulation as a factor during the vendor selection process.

Finally, they might want to consider the option to suspend BitLocker during an update when evaluating vendors. Regardless of the update process es available, organizations will need to establish procedures that establish clear communication and coordination between the many functional teams related to firmware.

Potential Negative Effects: The potential for a bad firmware update to cause damage remains one of the most persistent fears for enterprises when it comes to firmware updates. Fortunately, increased testing and support for both automated and manual firmware rollback options have made firmware updates far safer than they were 10 or 15 years ago.

In particular, leading enterprise technology vendors such as Intel, HP Enterprise, Dell, Lenovo and others have invested in tools to automatically roll back to known good states of firmware in the case of a failed update. However, firmware can also have more subtle impacts on devices that may not be easily recognized, such as an update that makes the device run hotter or affects performance in other ways. Updates can also potentially affect device configurations that may inadvertently disable security features or the secure boot mechanisms of the device.

Solutions and Recommendations: While many vendors have vastly improved their capabilities for both automated and manual firmware rollback, many IT teams are not aware of these improvements. Teams should ask their vendors about these capabilities and factor them into procurement decisions.

Organizations need to create processes and develop tools to properly test firmware updates, stage rollouts of updates, and support rollback and recovery options when problems are detected. At the same time, organizations must develop their own processes for testing and controlling the rollout of firmware.

Teams should have tools to scan updated devices to ensure that secure boot and other security settings were not disabled during the update. Testing and manual rollback options are also particularly important. Teams need to test any automated rollback functionality and have backup plans to roll back to known good states if automated methods fail. Device Downtime: One of the persistent challenges of firmware management is that updates frequently require a reboot of the device.

This means that even in the best of circumstances firmware updates will require a certain amount of downtime. N Routers. Nighthawk Routers. Powerline and Wall Plug Extenders. Wireless Access Points. Other Business Products.

Mobile Broadband. The manufacturers of these devices make continuous improvements to the programs firmware that is responsible for efficiently running the device. As firmware carries out the integral functions of hardware, firmware updates bring some alterations in the program, which are necessary to enable the corresponding devices to operate proficiently as well as to fix the bugs for better security. Before updating the firmware, you need to make sure that the update is for the exact device model that you own.

If you apply an update that is intended for a similar-but-different model, your device would be at a serious risk of becoming non-operational. In such cases, the old microcode will be overwritten with the new programs that are incompatible with your device model, so installing such update will brick your device.

Usually, the manufacturer of the device releases the updates. You can get to know about the updates available for your device by adopting any of the following ways:. Digital services are undergoing frequent changes because the process of progress is a never-ending one. New products are introduced to the market and are packed with newer technologies and better functionalities.