Windows XP may be 12 years old, but the operating system still owns roughly 31 percent of the market share to date – that’s an estimated 500 million PCs, according to Net Market Share. The widely adopted and battle-proven system offers a user-friendly experience that many organizations have latched onto for employee productivity and day-to-day business operations. On April 8, 2014, however, the extended support for XP is scheduled to end, forcing those enterprises still running on legacy systems to either migrate or be left open to security vulnerabilities.
What does this mean for security managers and Chief Security Information Officers (CISOs) at an organization still running XP? If there are any problems, threats or system infections, then these organizations will have to manage the issues without Microsoft’s resources. The absence of support leaves enterprises open to countless security threats, especially as hackers are actively pursuing XP’s vulnerabilities to unleash viruses and access the sensitive data that many organizations host on their XP devices. This situation could quickly become an urgent threat to any business still running XP.