But Microsoft wants to avoid that with its latest operating system, aggressively pushing users to update their systems.
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Terry Halvorsen, chief information officer for the Pentagon, noted in Microsoft’s announcement that the agency spends $44 billion annually on cybersecurity and IT. He said the DoD needed to “deploy innovation faster to ensure systems are more secure, more efficient and cost-effective, and standardized on one platform”.
“This also says to me that Windows 10 is ready for the broadest deployments inside corporations”.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has agreed to upgrade 4 million software licenses to Microsoft’s latest operating system by February 2017. “From laptops to desktops to mobile devices, including Surface devices, the DoD is targeting its Windows 10 upgrade for completion in a year, an unprecedented move for a customer with the size and complexity of the DoD”, he wrote.
At the same time, Microsoft continues to offer users who upgrade to Windows 10 the possibility of downgrading to their previous Windows version, be it 7 or 8.1, during the 30 days after the install, so it’s believed that some these actually took advantage of this offer and returned. “On top of this, the Surface family of devices are now fully certified and available through the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Unified Capabilities (UC) Approved Products List (APL)”. Thousands of organizations still use Windows 7, and Microsoft is keen to avoid businesses sticking with it and creating another Windows XP situation.
In addition to the deployment news, Microsoft’s Surface line of products has been certified to meet the Defense Department’s security and interoperability requirements.
“It is important for the department to rapidly transition to Microsoft Windows 10 to in order to improve our cybersecurity posture, lower the cost of IT, and streamline the IT operating environment”, the memo reads.
It is the largest single deployment of Windows 10 since its release six months ago, she said. More could get it in the coming weeks and months, so an increase in Windows 10 adoption rate could be experienced in the near future.
The Redmond company has touted Windows 10 security features like integrated fingerprint and face scanning and a feature that walls off the operating system’s core functions to prevent them from being infected by malware.
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The DoD first began to adopt Windows 10 in November 2015.
