Upgrade or face risk:
Microsoft to end support for Windows 2003 by July 2015
Cyber security sleuths
have alerted users of ‘Windows 2003′ in the country to either migrate or apply
appropriate security solutions as makers of this popular operating system have
announced its “end of life.”
“Microsoft has announced
that the ‘End of Life’ for Windows Server-2003 is July 14, 2015. Security
patches and updates will no longer be available after this period for Windows
2003 and older servers will be more vulnerable to malicious attacks. It could
amount to be risking both the business data as well as the intellectual
property.
“It is recommended
that all users and organisations using Windows Server-2003 in their environment
should look for software vendors and service providers who offer assistance in
migrating from Windows Server-2003 to a supported operating system or a
cloud-based service,” the Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In) said
in its latest advisory to users.
The CERT-In is the
nodal agency to combat hacking, phishing and to fortify security-related
defences of the Indian Internet domain.
“The CERT-In has made
an early start in this regard. The agency will keep updating the users of this
Operating System (OS) over the period of time, till its complete shut arrives
in the middle of next year,” an Information Technology (IT) expert said.
There are still a few
users of this OS in the country, experts said.
Windows Server-2003
was introduced in April, 2003 and its latest major update was service pack-2
which was released in March of 2007. Server 2003 replaced Windows Server 2000
which was the first of the post-Windows NT server operating systems from Microsoft.
The latest version of
Windows is its ‘2012 R2′ operating server.
PTI