ROBERT KYSLINGER, Founder and Managing General Partner, OMNIPOTECH
Microsoft will be deeming a number of products end-of-life (EOL) in 2020. It is imperative you get with your IT staff or provider to get ahead of this replacement schedule. This article focuses primarily on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Exchange 2010 and Office 2010, but you can Google "Microsoft EOL 2020" to see the entire list of products expiring. When a product is declared EOL, it means the provider will no longer provide support or patches for that software. The EOL software still operates as normal because it doesn't "know" it has been retired by Microsoft.
While most users call their IT team for Microsoft support, the real issue is the lack of patches. Patches fix known security issues in software. When a patch is announced, the security problem it addresses is also defined, meaning the software provider described the exact security flaw to the entire world. Threat actors, also known as "the bad guys," write their own software to exploit these holes looking for unpatched systems primarily through malware. When software goes EOL, security issues are still identified, but the patches are no longer provided by the software creator. Since most organizations attempt to delay the hard costs of software and hardware replacement, threat actors have more holes to exploit with the added comfort of knowing those holes will never be fixed.
When people think of security, their first thought is hacking, but exploiting known security flaws in software is like shooting fish in a barrel. For this reason, you must patch all your software products to close the exploit, plus have reliable perimeter and interior security combined with rock-solid backups, business continuity and disaster recovery. Another reason to get moving on the replacement of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 computers is due to global supply chain shortages. When global demand for a product rises at the same time, global supply shrinks, causing prices to increase dramatically -- basic supply and demand. We've seen this issue multiple times over the past several years: the typhoon in Malaysia, which affected the global supply of hard drives, and the random access memory (RAM) shortages when Samsung and Apple switched to DDR4 DRAM, which was the same memory used for computers. The current global shortage is in central processing units (CPUs).
Intel's 2019 Q1 quarterly report foreshadowed a global supply problem for CPUs lasting up to two years. In our current client base, we've seen the price of computers increase from 4 percent to 9 percent in the first five months of this year. More importantly, we are having issues sourcing larger quantities of systems for clients when we need to purchase 50-100 systems at once. In 2018, we could order a new laptop/desktop and reasonably expect to have it within five to seven business days with accelerated shipping. In 2019, those same vendors now have lead times between 17-23 business days, which is essentially a calendar month.
Another issue surrounding the replacement of EOL software is manpower. As you know, we have the lowest unemployment rate in decades, and the unemployment rate for technical people is at record lows. While replacing personal computers with newer Windows 10 systems or upgrading to a newer version of Microsoft Office is not the most technically skilled role, migrating all of your email from Exchange 2010 to Office 365 or another platform requires a skilled professional. While many IT people have a lot of "know-about" regarding these types of complex migrations, very few have the actual "know-how" to accomplish them successfully without affecting your organization's email flow. In short, Windows 2008 server and mail migrations are not a job for rookies. Since the number of skilled firms is fixed and so is their manpower capacity, our recommendation is to get with your IT team or provider today. Set your budget, order your new hardware systems and licenses, and schedule your project to get in line for deployment. If you procrastinate, then you will start February 2020 with major holes in your desktop operating system, Microsoft Office productivity suite and mail server for threat actors to gleefully exploit, exposing you to ransomware.
For more information, visit www.omnipotech.com or call (281) 768-4308.
