Goodbye XP

Posted on: April 22, 2014 | By: Christina Bonds | Filed under: Info Security

On April 8, 2014 Microsoft ended the support of its operating system, XP.  XP has been around for twelve years but now Microsoft has decided “to invest our resources toward supporting more recent technologies so that we can continue to deliver great new experiences”, their website says.

XP was not only used in home PCs but also in several other places such as ATMs, payment terminals and medical devices.  For some enterprises the ending of XP support comes with an expensive price tag.  Thousands of machines will either need to be upgraded or replaced entirely with new hardware.

What are the security risks?

The lack of support also means no more security updates.  If there are vulnerabilities found they will not be fixed which leaves computers running XP at risk for attacks.  Keeping up to date antivirus software is advisable but upgrading to a newer OS is recommended.  Attackers will no doubt target the OS even more knowing there will be no more updates for XP.  If you have a PC that is still running the now obsolete OS and it is connected to the internet please consider having it upgraded.

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Christina Bonds

Christina Bonds, CISSP, is an Application Developer at Elon University

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