Microsoft Security Essentials dialogs for a few weeks, and you've been seeing the headlines for more than that. When you have Facebook friends in the IT industry, doubtlessly they've been sharing articles for the past six to twelve months.
Right now, you've realized that your Windows XP computer didn't explode or go wrong following the sunset of support, so what're the implications of continuing to use an unsupported os? For starters, if you want to call Microsoft for support with any problems from this day forward, they're not going to simply help you. If you're like the majority of people, you probably haven't called Microsoft before dozen years, so you won't miss the fact they're not likely to be there going forward. Rest assured that for so long as you wish to continue using XP, consultancies like Maverick Solutions is going to be there to simply help solve any problems you might have.
Without Microsoft support, however, you will see you can forget security patches, feature updates, bug-fixes, or driver updates. Presumably after 12 years, Microsoft has probably found and resolved all the bugs. For all the current hardware in existence, drivers have already been published if they're going to be. There will be no new Windows features, so today's Windows XP is the better it's ever going to get.
How about security? Hackers have already been attacking technology for as long as people have already been using technology, and nothing is going to change that. In the past, when Microsoft identified a vulnerability in Windows XP, they released a patch to correct it. The identification of vulnerabilities, however, is normally the result of analyzing exploitations of the vulnerabilities, after the fact. The same as medicine doesn't create vaccinations before diseases are discovered, so, too, security experts don't patch security holes until someone finds and exploits those holes. Even then, it does take time to develop solutions, and it requires time for you to distribute them to Windows users. If your personal computer was configured to automatically download and install Windows updates, it still might have taken a week or longer before your personal computer received and installed security patches. If your computer was configured otherwise, you may have never received such patches.
Actually, there are an incredible number of bad guys attacking technology, and many fewer security experts defending us from their website, so the nice guys tend to apply sort of triage when determining which holes to patch first. The ones which have the potential to cause the absolute most widespread damage are remediated first, and the more-obscure or less-harmful ones are left on the back burner. Third-party anti-malware software has the same shortcomings, so relying solely on operating-system patches and anti-malware software is never the best way to safeguard your systems.
The truth that Microsoft is stopping support for XP and moving their security experts to the later os's is actually a good sign for Windows buy windows 10 key users, in a way. Just as security experts make an effort to take advantage of these time by remediating the most-widespread, most-harmful malware, hackers economize on their time, too, by attacking the most common software. If significantly less than one percent of today's computers still use 1980s Microsoft DOS, there's no vig to find vulnerabilities; there could be terribly few places to exploit those vulnerabilities and it'd take time to even locate those systems. Microsoft moving its security experts'mitigation efforts from Windows XP to the later operating systems is indicative of the increasing market-share of those os's, that may also attract more hackers far from Windows XP.
As a strategy, however, the most effective anti-malware idea continues to be effective, and continues to be free: don't use an administrator account as your everyday user account. The second-best strategy will even continue being free and effective for a little longer: install and update Microsoft Security Essentials. Microsoft announced they will continue to offer it to Windows XP users through July. If you want help employing either of those strategies, look for a nearby consultancy like ours to come set them up for you.
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