I thought this was interesting, yesterday – October 25th 2021, was Windows XP’s 20^th birthday.  And here we are on the cusp of Windows 11 rolling out to workstations across the country.

What I really found interesting about this article was that it mentions a significant amount of people continue to use Windows XP to this day.  (Significant is pretty relative.)  Mainstream support for Windows XP ended on April 14, 2009, with extended support lasting another five years.  This means that anyone still running Windows XP has not received support from Microsoft for roughly 7.5 years now, including almost all security updates and fixes for vulnerabilities that may have been discovered.

Think of all the vulnerabilities, viruses, exploits that have occurred in the last 8 years.  Think of all the technology changes on the web.  These old systems are very vulnerable to abuse and modern secure systems cannot support these legacy devices.

It’s important to keep your systems patched for the latest security updates to protect your members data and your corporate infrastructure.  Members need to remain current to keep their own systems safe.  CU*Answers Web Services updates your WordPress website core and plugins weekly (and as needed for immediate vulnerabilities) and partnering with CU*Answers Network Services, we update the host servers monthly (or as needed for immediate concerns.)  In addition, we regularly sunset older technology that we can no longer support, usually because the manufacture stopped maintaining it, like Microsoft did with Windows XP.  The Internet Explorer web browser is another example.

In short, keep your systems current.  Technology changes and systems get patched to make them more secure.  Staying up to date keeps your systems more secure too.