Kaspersky Research Finds 41% of Consumers Still Use Unsupported or Nearly E

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Kaspersky Research Finds 41% of Consumers Still Use Unsupported or Nearly Expired Operating Systems

"https://usa.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/2019_consumers-still-use-unsupported-and-near-end-of-life-os"

According to Kaspersky research, nearly 41% of consumers still use unsupported or approaching end of support desktop operating systems (OS) like Windows XP or Windows 7. Similarly, 40% of very small businesses (VSBs) and 48% of small, medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises still rely on these systems for their security needs.

In most cases, the end of an OS lifecycle means that no further updates will be issued by the vendor including updates related to cybersecurity. As OS become outdated, it is common for security researchers or cyber attackers to find previously unknown vulnerabilities within these systems. Subsequently, these vulnerabilities may be exploited in future cyberattacks leaving users exposed as they will not receive patches to resolve the issue. To gauge how many of these at-risk systems exist at scale, Kaspersky researchers analyzed the anonymized data of OS use provided by Kaspersky Security Network users. The results found that four out of ten consumers still use obsolete systems, including Windows XP and Vista.

When identifying the specific versions of outdated OS being used, two percent of consumers and one percent of workstations used by VSBs rely on Windows XP, an OS which has not been supported for over 10 years. Less than half a percent of consumers (0.3%) and VSBs (0.2%) still prefer Windows Vista, an OS that has not received mainstream support for seven years. Remarkably, some consumers (1%) and businesses (0.6% of VSBs and 0.4% of SMBs and enterprises) were unaware of the free update to Windows 8.1 and continue to use Windows 8 which has not been supported by Microsoft since January 2016.