Microsoft has time and again warned people around the globe that it will stop supporting the Windows XP OS in April 2014 and companies who are still using it should upgrade to the later versions. But it looks like most banks have paid no heed to this bit of warning and hence now have a deadline looming over them to upgrade to better versions.
In the US alone, there are about 420,000 ATM machines that need to let go of Windows XP. April 8 is the date when Microsoft stops offering security and tech support to the OS, thus leaving all of them vulnerable to threats, viruses and all the unwanted malware. Bloomberg Business Week reports that about 95 percent of the ATMs around the world use Microsoft’s operating system.
However, not all of them run the regular version of Windows XP, a considerable number of such computers make the most of Windows XP Embedded. This particular OS is less susceptible to viruses and the Redmond-based company will be supporting the version until 2016. So banks using this platform, have nothing to worry about, right now.
In India too, most banks and government sector offices rely on the outdated version of the OS. We had reported back in November that Microsoft has taken it on itself to conduct surveys in order to inform its enterprise customers about the disadvantages of using XP. About 30 percent of the commercial organizations as well as 50 percent of all the bank branches in the country were at a risk, as of November 2013.
Windows XP was released as many as 12 years ago.