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News

August 21 , 2013

End of Support for Microsoft XP, Windows Server 2003, Small Business Server 2003

As you may have heard on the news or other news sources, Microsoft will be ending support for its venerable operating system, Windows XP, on April 8th, 2014. Also of interest to business users, Windows Server 2003, Windows Small Business 2003 and Office 2003 will also be end of support. The question of what does this mean to you, the business owner?

  1. Microsoft will no longer publish updates to these operating systems. This means any new security flaws that are discovered will not be patched, leaving these machines susceptible to attack by hackers, with no way to close the security holes.
  2. Hardware manufacturers will no longer support these operating systems. They will not publish drivers or driver updates.
  3. Application developers will not support Windows XP or the other OS’s mentioned at the start of this article. Since Microsoft is no longer providing support to application developers for these platforms, they will no longer write updates to their products to run on these operating systems. These application developers include Antivirus and firewall developers. Ironically, this includes Microsoft. Newer versions of Office do not support older operating systems.
  4. You will be potentially liable for compliance issues. Healthcare, retailers, financial institutions, accountants, law firms, etc., will have limited ability to protect their clients’ data, putting them at risk for violating HIPAA, PCI, Massachusetts Privacy laws and other regulatory statutes. Cited violations for violating various compliance standards can run into the thousands of dollars.
  5. Aside for security issues, older operating systems have less ability to handle newer and more robust software requirements of most businesses.

Given all of these issues, small business owners should begin planning how they will approach upgrading their operating systems, including consideration of whether current hardware will be supported by newer operating systems. This consideration should include peripherals as well, as older printers may be incompatible with Windows 7 or Windows 8, for example.
For more information on whether you should upgrade, or how to approach these upgrades, please contact us, either by using the contact form on our website, or call the office at (978) 762-4440