What free antivirus after MSE stops in april? i was looking at AVG but any others as good as MSE?

Most are better than MSE - it's considered one of the worst.

Because of the Internet we do not live in isolation. Whilst it is of little concern whether you personally suffer the consequences of your choices, other people can feel the effects of the botnets that are largely populated by unpatched and insecure systems.

Dave

I'd say each OS is more like a mid life refresh of a cr line up. Refreshed look, a new feature or two, lots of problems found in the field fixed

UAC on 7 and 8 is barely noticeable and you don't see it on everything you download from the internet.

There is a reason very few people complain about it anymore

the huge design fault with UAC on vista was that it would warn you that an action would require a UAC elevation, ask you to OK that, then ask you for the elevation and ask you to OK that.

i'm sure there was some reasoning behind it. but it appeared crazy.

Has this actually been confirmed? Obviously the program itself won't get any changes, but MSE is on other platforms besides XP and I would have thought the definition files would apply to all.

Exactly. And - just as with human vaccination programmes - the concept of herd immunity applies, so that people who fail to keep their systems updated are nevertheless safer because other people do. The ability to keep XP systems updated will soon be lost, so these people (even on other versions of windows) become less safe as a consequence.

Yeah on Vista it would ask you permission more or less every time you moved your mouse "You have moved your mouse, cancel or allow?"

more like moving your mouse will require you to give permission, is that OK. then the actual permission question.

i think to be fair the problem as well as bad design was that it particularly affected you when you had a new computer and were installing all your stuff.

I recently used a NatWest Bank ATM machine and during this period it locked-up and subsequently rebooted itself. As a consequence of this action I was able to see the reboot process on the machine's screen.

Which operating system was the machine using? Why Windows XP of course!

I understand a great number of business related machines still use XP. Are these all going to be replaced by April 2014? I think not.

They will not be connected to the public internet and no one uses them to generally browse the web. They're doing no harm


It depends on what the machine is doing, things like ATM are fine on XP. General work desktops that people actively use are very different thing and a lot will miss the deadline. But they will be managed in a way that makes them as secure as possible. Companies that don't upgrade or have upgrade plans that take them past April will have already decided if the risk is worth it.

An interesting aspect for XP is that Windows 7 patches will be reverse engineered by AV companies and malware writers to see if the same holes are in XP.

So a patched flaw in 7 will likely highlight an unpatched flaw in XP.
Seems like it could be quite a goldmine for XP malware wannabes.

Seems to me that there are so many flaws in all Windows OS, it doesn't make any difference which one you use.....XP, Vista, 7 or 8.

If you get hit by the malware before Microsoft close the gate then patches are of no use whatsoever....whether it's supported or not.

That's just one of the reasons why I'm not particularly concerned about upgrading my Windows OS.

By design the security architecture of Vista, 7 and 8.x is vastly superior to any previous Windows OS, including XP SP2+.

Dave

The 'good security' seems over hyped to me.

So many of the flaws are imposed by Internet Explorer, Office and Exchange. Microsoft adds its own insecure baggage, especially with IE.


Sort of acknowledging that hype just looks at this months security bulletin. They simply say 'Microsoft Windows' or 'Microsoft Office', knowing full well they would get criticised for carrying flaws forwards and then adding some new ones !
Could be worse I suppose. At least they have not yet banned AV products which also help detect flaws.

The difference is though, with supported OSs, these flaws/holes get patched once they're found by hackers. With XP though, these flaws/holes are left there and not fixed because the OS isn't getting the updates that it needs. As for the underlined bit, this is what anti malware software is for. Although, this isn't guaranteed to get rid of all malware straight away.

How is it overhyped?

Dave

I see a touch of hype there Dave.

As we know, many holes get inherited in the next gen OS, and for good measure, can even add new ones.

It's only over hyped if the security architecture in 7 and 8 is not vastly superior to XP. but it is.

it happens all the time where an exploit is discovered in the XP core, or IE, flash, acrobat, java but the same vector is mitigated automatically in 7 & 8 because of other built in protections.

Interesting "over the shoulder" and "over the counter" observations tell me that quite a few "corporates" such as the NHS, my Building Society, my Opticians etc. appear to be still using XP. Wonder what upgrade plans they have?

Also, when I worked in Local Government being arm-twisted into very expensive (£10,0000s!) upgrades by Microsoft offered a poor Return On Investment as people carried on working with their products in the same old way.

Best investment ever was Citrix - remote and mobile access and homeworking. That was revolutionary and really changed working methods.

Is that not down to bad training and management though?

Yes vulnerabilities get inherited as every version of the OS is not a complete rewrite. I think Dave's point is that Vista, Win7/8 got much better built in mitigations that make turning a bug into an actual vulnerability that can be exploited.

It is not hype, it is a simple statement of fact.

MSE receives updates independently of WU, but is included in WU if the updates are still pending.

As MSE will continue to operate beyond XP EOL, then updates for MSE will continue to arrive, but not via WU mechanism.

Only problem is XP will no longer be a supported platform for MSE, so if the updates don't work, are no longer offered or the system fouls up, then you will have to remove MSE and take an alternative.

This is a good example of the actual discussion of this thread. Stuff that runs on WINDOWS isn't guaranteed to work on XP. Period.

There's probably some element of truth in that.

I could add that staff were able to carry out their TASKS without exploring potential benefits by the upgrades. With more training they MIGHT have done so but many were non-technical and possibly still have not benefited.

The organisation always talked about training but in practice offered very little. Management was a mixed bunch ranging from excellent to abysmal.

Our Department once opted to "do nothing" with one particular upgrade and saved £,000s with little or no productivity disbenefits.

I'm from West Yorkshire also and actually not Ripper Street. So which of five Councils? No names, no pack drill.