On April
8th, 2014, support and updates for the now 12 year old OS Windows XP and
Microsoft Office 2003 will no longer be available. But believe it or not, many
businesses are still running on the aged OS. A recent survey from the
research firm Gartner showed that more than 15% of midsize to large businesses
still have Windows XP running on at least 10% of their PCs. If you're one of
them - this article is for you.
I personally
have worked for the past two years or so with companies such as UBS Financial
Services and Morgan Stanley to migrate their users over to Windows 7. For the companies that
have moved away from Windows XP, it has been a long and complicated process.
Derrick Wood, group CIO at Wood Group, said that it took a three-year multi-million
dollar program to get his company ready for life after XP. But don't get the
idea that staying in the past would only effect major companies; Windows XP
will soon be extremely vulnerable to attack via even the most simple functions such
as email and browsing the web.
The support
that Microsoft has been providing for the past 12 years includes security fixes
and patches for vulnerable features such as Internet Explorer, not to mention
the base OS itself. So after April 8th, any newly discovered exploits won't be
fixed, leaving your entire network and systems vulnerable to various cyber
attacks such as network intrusions, data theft and identity theft. And no, your antivirus software will not be the band aide for this problem.
If you are
one of the many still running XP, migrating to a newer or different OS may be
easier said than done. If you're just running things like Quickbooks, Outlook
or Excel, then you're probably okay to upgrade or replace your systems rather
easily. But if you have small time, independent software, you may want to
give me a call.
www.MooreITHelp.com
617-396-7044
www.MooreITHelp.com
617-396-7044
