14 DAY TRIAL // Tomorrow, on March 11, Microsoft will release five security bulletins as part of this month’s Patch Tuesday. Two of the bulletins are “critical,” while the other three have been rated as “important.”
Deb Shinder, one of the many experts contributing to GFI Software’s Talk Tech To Me blog, provides some recommendations for both users and businesses regarding the March updates.
“While this month's Patch Tuesday payload is relatively light – with two out of five patches rated as critical – it is still an important set of patches to deploy quickly,” Shinder has told Softpedia.
“This Patch Tuesday will be the penultimate set of patches for Windows XP, with support for the popular, albeit aging, operating system finally coming to an end with the April 8th series of patches,” she added.
“According to NetMarketShare, 29 percent of computers connected to the internet still use Windows XP, so on that basis it is important that the latest patches are deployed for these users.”
While it’s clear that many users will be at risk if they fail to upgrade their operating systems, businesses should be even more concerned.
After the April 8 updates are rolled out, Microsoft will stop providing security fixes for XP. This means that companies which continue to run the outdated OS, particularly on critical networks, are leaving the door open to cybercriminals.
“Businesses should at the very least take a look at their PC inventories and, where necessary, bite the bullet and upgrade any XP computers they still have running inside the organization,” Shinder explained.
“However, the reason why it is important to deploy all the patches, specifically for Windows XP, is that many users are connecting to work resources with their home computers and many of those are running XP as well.”
Even more problematic is that many employees could access their organizations’ critical systems remotely from machines running Windows XP. Companies should take this into consideration and take appropriate measures.
“On that basis alone, it is advisable that businesses update their policies and set up technological safeguards to prevent telecommuters and mobile workers from accessing mission critical network resources with their home computers and laptops until they’ve upgraded to an OS that is still supported,” the expert noted.
Beginning last weekend, Microsoft has started pushing out alerts to warn Windows XP customers that support ends on April 8. Some experts are wondering whether the alerts will also show up on ATMs, many of which are still running XP.