3 Free Personal Software Inspector (PSI) Alternatives To Update And Secure System

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Personal Software Inspector (PSI), a popular automatic software and security update program, has been discontinued by Flexera. We will look into Personal Software Inspector (PSI) alternatives but first let’s see what exactly PSI was built for. The PSI majorly performed three tasks:

  1. Check for, download and install Windows Updates.
  2. Check for, download and install installed software updates.
  3. Check for security vulnerabilities and download and install their fixes.
Secunia PSI system scan
Secunia PSI system scan

While a lot of other software updater programs concentrated on providing updates to installed software, Secunia PSI created a uniqueness by adding security to the checklist. Unfortunately Flexera has announced that new updates to PSI will not be available after 20th April, 2018.

If you go to PSI download page, Flexera will show you the following notice:

Thank you for your interest in PSI. PSI is Flexera’s free computer security solution that identifies missing security patches on user’s private PC, and automatically installs them when possible.

This product is reaching End-of-life on April 20, 2018, and therefore, no longer available. On April 20, 2018, existing installations of PSI will no longer function and should be uninstalled.

If you are a PSI user, this article is for you. We will discuss about the possible alternatives to PSI. Basically, we will look at which software or service does all the tasks which PSI used to do i.e, Windows Updates, update installed software and security fixes.

PSI Alternatives

Patch My PC – The best alternative to PSI

Patch My PC is the biggest competitor of Personal Software Inspector in terms of features. And an added advantage that Patch My PC is portable and comes with an uninstaller option to uninstall unwanted software. Software updates are checked from a database of 300 commonly used software. Patch My PC also checks for missing Windows updates as well as security vulnerabilities in the system.

Patch My PC Updater - the best PSI alternative
Patch My PC Updater – the best PSI alternative

One advantage of Patch My PC, for me as a techie, is that it gives the user a caching mode. IT Pro Caching mode is helpful when you have to updates multiple systems. Just check the option “IT Pro Caching mode” in options and in addition to upgrading the system, Patch My PC will download and save all updates in the same folder from where it is run.

If it detects that the setup is already there in the folder, the next update will not be downloaded from the Internet but will be installed from local path. This can be helpful if you run Patch My PC from a USB pen drive or a network folder.

Download Patch My PC Updater

Heimdal Agent Free – Select software to monitor and update

Heimdal Agent Free concentrates on patching system, getting silent and automatic software updates keeping your installed software up to date. It does not scan Windows updates for security vulnerabilities and missed patches. One advantage Heimdal Agent Free is that it gives user the option to select from a list of installed software to monitor and update when required.

Heimdal Agent Free
Heimdal Agent Free

You can select auto-update for automatically installing when updates are available. Otherwise, un-check the option to get updates and install them manually. Heimdal Agent Pro will give you more power by blocking malicious Internet traffic and malware infection scanning.

Download Heimdal Agent Free

SecPod Saner Personal – Enterprise grade cross-platform vulnerability scanner

SecPod Saner Personal is an easy to use, light-weight and enterprise grade security solution for Windows, Mac and Linux. It identifies loop-holes and vulnerabilities in the system and will automatically update the system with latest patches.

SecPod Saner
SecPod Saner

You can even schedule system scanning. It not only scans for outdated software, it will also find security vulnerabilities in the Operating System. If you want full security compliance, you will need to fix all vulnerabilities found in installed software as well as the Operating System.

Applying security patches is easy, just click on the Fix link in front of each detected vulnerability or “Remediate All” will fix all found vulnerabilities.

Download SecPod Saner

Other software updater utilities

There are a lot of other software updater programs and services which will scan and detect installed software and then update them if required. The reason for not including them in this list was that they were not doing all the work which PSI was doing that’s why I didn’t add them to PSI alternatives list.

If you are just interested in updating software and not check for system vulnerabilities, I’m listing down the software updater programs below:

Which software updater or security scanner do you prefer? With security threats increasing day by day, it is becoming essential to have some sort of security scanning solution as well as an Antivirus or Internet Security. PSI was one of the favorite too for many people but now they will need to replace PSI with its alternatives.

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Usman Khurshid
Usman Khurshid is a seasoned IT Pro with over 15 years of experience in the IT industry. He has experience in everything from IT support, helpdesk, sysadmin, network admin, and cloud computing. He is also certified in Microsoft Technologies (MCTS and MCSA) and also Cisco Certified Professional in Routing and Switching.

1 comment

  • DAVID

    Thanks for the good advice and information greatly appreciated

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