Education faces 'red alert' as XP SP2's retirement looms

Organizations in education and the financial, health care, and manufacturing industries will soon face more security risks because they continue to run the soon-to-be-retired Windows XP Service Pack 2.

TORONTO (Computerworld) June 22, 2010 -- Three out of four companies will soon face more security risks because they continue to run the soon-to-be-retired Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), said a report published June 22.

Toronto-based technology systems and services provider Softchoice Corp. said that 77 percent of the organizations it surveyed are running Windows XP SP2 on 10 percent or more of their PCs.

Nearly 46 percent of the 280,000 business computers Softchoice analyzed rely on the aged operating system. "This is a red alert," said Softchoice's services development manager.

"This isn't something you can safely ignore." He was referring to the impending end-of-support deadline that Microsoft Corp. has set for Windows XP SP2, a service pack that debuted in the fall of 2004. After July 13, Microsoft will stop issuing security updates for SP2, a move that has users scrambling to update to Windows XP SP3, which will be supported until April 2014.

"Windows XP SP2 is deployed in 100 [percent] of the companies [surveyed] to some extent," said the manager. "But that doesn't tell the whole story.

On average, 36 [percent] of the PCs in every organization run SP2." Softchoice obtained its data from customers of its IT assessment services, which include asset, hardware life cycle and licensing management.

It analyzed PCs in 117 U.S. and Canadian organizations in education and the financial, health care and manufacturing industries.

The firm weighted the number of XP SP2 systems in each polled organization to arrive at the average usage mark of 36 percent.

Link: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9178378/Most_firms_face_security_red_alert_as_XP_SP2_s_retirement_looms

Source: DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report