April 8, 2014 will be the End of the World

Paul Bush, Principal Consultant, OneSource Technology, Inc.

Or at least the “end of life” for several popular Microsoft products. Microsoft has announced that Windows XP, Office 2003, and Exchange 2003 will reach “end of life” next April. What does that mean to you and me? At that point, Microsoft will stop releasing updates and security patches for those products. As they age past April 2014, they will become bigger and bigger security risks. Your computer could be “hacked”, your data compromised, or your identity stolen. Or worse, what about your business data, your customer’s information, or your patient’s health information? An unpatched and insecure workstation can lead to all these things. Even if your computer never connects to the Internet and just sits in a corner by itself, the programs and applications you buy today probably won’t run on Windows XP, or won’t be supported by their manufacturer. The moral of the story – upgrade now.