14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft ended support for Windows Server 2003 last month, but this doesn't seem to mean anything for IT experts and companies worldwide, as studies show that millions of computers are still running this particular server version despite the obvious security risks.
A research conducted by Netcraft in July 2015 reveals that no less than 175 million websites were still powered by servers running Windows Server 2003, which represents more than a fifth of all websites analyzed by the company.
Security companies also running WS2003
According to the findings, 73 percent of these websites are served by IIS 6.0, which was available in Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP 64-bit, but the latter is very unlikely to be used on many servers. So Windows Server 2003 is still powering most servers, which obviously creates major risks in case any big vulnerability is found.
The study also reveals that China and the United States account for 55 percent of the whole Windows Server 2003 share right now, with the former having 169,000 computers running the unsupported platform right now, while the latter drops to 166,000.
Chinese company Alibaba Group has 24,000 computers running Windows Server 2003, while other large firms, such as ING Direct, are also using this unsupported platform. What's more surprising is that some security firms too use WS2003, including Panda Security and eScan.
“While Microsoft does not officially offer any support beyond the extended support period ('Once a product transitions out of support, no further support will be provided for the product'), reports suggest that some companies who have not migrated in time have arranged to pay millions of dollars for custom support deals,” Netcraft explains.
Needless to say, companies that are still running Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are strongly recommended to upgrade as soon as possible. Otherwise, the risks of security breaches are increasing every single day, and Microsoft cannot provide any type of support in case this happens.