Farewell to Windows 7

mcotton
Mar 3, 2020
2 min read

Updated: Aug 24, 2021

The time has finally come, and Microsoft has ceased its support of Windows 7 which could prove to have a profound impact on many businesses. The top estimates at the time of writing this, put the number of businesses yet to migrate at 66% which could have huge ramifications.

Microsoft orginally released Windows 7 on July 22nd 2009, and now after more than ten years its all over. End of support for Windows 7 creates three major issues:-

1. No more technical support

2. No more software updates

3. Most importantly, no more security updates

From a performance perspective, users may not notice any immediate changes in their windows 7 Operating system as it will still run just the same as it always has.

However, without regular software patches they may come up against faults or bugs that would otherwise have been fixed. Equally, they may find modern applications (Office365 as an example) suddenly become unsupported on Windows 7.

Another WannaCry?

The WannaCry Ransomware attack in 2017 is reported to have hit around a third of NHS Trusts and almost one in ten general practitioners, resulting in 19,000 cancelled appointments and financial losses of £92 million, according to the Department of Health and Social Care. So could we see another mass attack in 2020?

Ian Wood, Senior Director, EMEA Cloud and Governance Business Practice, Symantec said "WannaCry was a clear example of the dangers that businesses can face when they are using software that has reached end of life. Even now in March 2020, a quarter of all PCs are going to fall into this category so it's vital that the organisations that rely on Windows 7 are aware of the risks and what they need to mitigate them. Organisations need to understand their data and make sure that information is being stored in the right place where it can be protected and made available when needed."

Is your business at risk?

Good Cyber sceurity means keeping track of where your data and assets are, as this can help you identify vulnerable systems or legacy equipment which should be retired. With GDPR bringing almost every employee device into scope, keeping track of assets has become even more important.