14 DAY TRIAL // The United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) says a migration from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is already under way, promising the 2009 operating system would be history when it reaches the end of support in January 2020.
Right now, Windows 7 is still powering some three quarters of the computers the organization uses, which means that more than one million of devices are currently running an OS which would no longer receive security updates in just a few months.
NHS was caught unguarded two years ago when its Windows XP computers were infected with the WannaCry ransomware, wreaking havoc within its network and causing some services to go offline.
But this time, state officials say the migration to Windows 10 is already under way, and by January many of the 1.05 million devices should complete the upgrade. It’s not yet clear if NHS purchased or plans to purchase custom support for Windows 7 for the systems not upgraded before the deadline.
Windows XP still in use
Jackie Doyle-Price, the Parliamentary Undersecretary for the State, says everything is going according to the plan so far.
“All NHS organisations, with the exception of one which had already upgraded to Windows 10, have signed up to receive Windows 10 licences and Advanced Threat Protection,” she was quoted as saying by ZDNet.
“Deployment of Windows 10 is going well and in line with target to make sure the NHS is operating on supported software when Windows 7 goes out of support in 2020.”
Meanwhile, the NHS keeps using Windows XP on some devices, but this is only because the operating system launched in 2001 and retired in 2014 is embedded in medical devices, according to Doyle-Price. Organizations using this particular software have already been instructed on how to mitigate the risks of using an unsupported operating system.