Three industries that will be hit by the death of Windows XP
Today Microsoft drops update support for Windows XP, the incredibly popular operating system it launched nearly 12 years ago, meaning any future bugs or security flaws discovered will never be fixed…
This shouldn’t affect the majority of businesses who have upgraded to Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8, but for the nearly 30 per cent of computers still running XP worldwide, from today they are vulnerable.
1. ATMs
Nearly 95 per cent of cash machines worldwide run Windows XP, and while some run an embedded version of the software that will be maintained until 2016, the vast majority run standard XP.
looking through some old pics – here's when I BSOD'd an ATM withdrawing money and had to wait for it to reboot pic.twitter.com/mcl4zfrcxG
— Storlek (@SwedishForSize) October 26, 2013
2. Display Advertising
The boom of flat screen display advertising in the early 2000s flooded tube stations and stadiums with cheap LCD displays running the most popular operating system of the day. From today many of these will become vulnerable.
Ah BSOD on public terminals (like here at Charlotte airport), #priceless 🙂 pic.twitter.com/QAAzhkkmF8
— Chad Sakac (@sakacc) March 20, 2014
3. Small businesses
Small local businesses can lack IT departments, information chiefs or upgrade plans but often hold large amounts of customer data on older computers. They now face either a £70 per machine upgrade to Windows 7 or a £100-£190 per machine upgrade to Windows 8.
And the one that won’t be hit…
The UK government last week paid Microsoft £5.5m in order to secure another 12 months of security updates and support for their fleet of computers that still run Windows XP. Currently 85 per cent of NHS computers run on Windows XP.