14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft will pull the plug on Windows 7 in January next year, and while the risks of staying on unsupported Windows are huge, it doesn’t seem that consumers and business are very worried about it.
Research conducted by security vendor Kaspersky reveals that Windows 7 remains super-popular among consumers, very small businesses, and enterprises.
The anonymous data, which was collected with user consent, shows that 38 percent of the consumers are still on Windows 7, with the same share also recorded in the very small business market. In the case of SMBs and enterprises the percentage is even higher, as 47 percent of the devices currently run Windows 7.
Windows XP and Vista finally abandoned
The good thing is that Windows 10 is becoming more of the preferred choice for everyone. In the case of consumers, 53 percent of them are currently on Windows 10, while adoption among VSBs reached 55 percent. Only 47 percent of the SMBs and enterprises upgraded to Windows 10.
“Statistics show that a significant share of users, both businesses and individuals, still use workstations running an outdated or approaching end of lifecycle OS. The widespread use of Windows 7 is concerning, as there is less than six months to go until this version becomes unsupported,” Alexey Pankratov, Enterprise Solutions Manager, Kaspersky, says.
“The reasons behind this lag vary depending on the software in place, which may be unable to run on the newest OS versions, to economic reasons and even just down to habit. Nonetheless, an old unpatched OS is a cybersecurity risk – the cost of an incident may be substantially higher than the cost of upgrading. This is why we recommend that customers migrate to supported versions and ensure that additional security tools are in place during the transition period.”
Windows 7 will be retired on January 14, 2020, and at that point, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 will become the only supported Windows versions.