Windows XP is a Security Risk for Your Business

Windows XP is slated by Microsoft to have its support end on April 8, 2014. This means that everyone using XP beyond this date will no longer be able to receive security updates from Microsoft, which will turn Windows XP into a liability. You may be waiting until April to upgrade, but as you will see, even waiting a few months to upgrade is a risky move.

Despite the fact that Windows XP is almost a dozen years old and set to expire relatively soon, XP is still widely used by millions of users and has a claim on 21% of the market share. You can bet that an army of hackers is preparing to assault these millions of XP users come April when Microsoft drops its defenses. Security reports from the Malicious Software Removal Tool and Microsoft's free Security Essential program (which scans 400 million Outlook.com accounts and millions of Offices 365 accounts), reveal that, even with Microsoft providing security patches, XP is by far the OS most prone to virus infections.

Taken from these recent security reports, here are the infection rates (the number of infected computers for every 1,000 systems scanned) broken down by OS that contained malware.

• Windows XP SP3: 9.1 per 1000 scanned.
• Windows Vista SP2: 5.5 per 1000 scanned.
• Windows 7 SP1: 4.9 per 1000 scanned.
• Windows 8 RIM: 1.6 per 1000 scanned.

The fact that Windows XP is almost twice as likely to get an infection compared to Windows 7, and 6 times more likely to be hit with malware than Windows 8, should be enough of a scare to motivate any user concerned about network security to immediately dump Windows XP and upgrade to a more secure OS.

Now, you may be thinking, "The infection rate for Windows XP must be higher because it's targeted the most by hackers." This is not necessarily the case. Malware is written to attack whatever system it comes into contact with, and we can see that, by looking at the malware encounter rate from these same security reports, the percentages of computers having encounters with malware is fairly even across the different operating systems.

• Windows XP SP3: 16.3%
• Windows Vista SP2: 16.5%
• Windows 7 SP1: 19.1%
• Windows 8 RIM: 12.4%

After looking at this data, you get the idea that using the latest operating system like Windows 8 is your safest bet. In fact, upgrading to any system newer than Windows XP will greatly improve your current network security situation. ZDNet.com provides us with a technical explanation on why newer Windows operating systems have better security: "Microsoft has steadily incorporated defensive technologies into Windows with each new version. The only major technology XP had was Data Execution Prevention (DEP), and even the implementation of that has improved greatly in subsequent versions."

It's human nature to put off doing an important task like upgrading your OS, especially if you don't see the benefit of doing it now compared to waiting until April. It may even be the case that Windows XP users who haven't upgraded yet are more prone to procrastinate than other users, but we hope that in light of this information, XP users will be motivated to finally make the technological leap to this decade and upgrade to Windows 7 or 8. If you would like assistance securing your network by upgrading your technology, give us a call at 703-359-9211.