London's Metropolitan Police Still Running 27,000 Windows XP Desktops (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: London's Met Police has missed its deadline for abandoning the out-of-date operating system Windows XP, as findings reveal 27,000 computers still run on the software two years after official support ended. Microsoft stopped issuing updates and patches for Windows XP in Spring 2014, meaning that any new bugs and flaws in the operating system are left open to attack. A particularly risky status for the UK capital's police force – itself running operations against hacking and other cybercrime activity. The figures were disclosed by Conservative politician Andrew Boff. The Greater London Assembly member said: 'The Met should have stopped using Windows XP in 2014 when extended support ended, and to hear that 27,000 computers are still using it is worrying.' As in similar cases across civil departments, the core problem is bespoke system development, and the costs and time associated with integrating a new OS with customized systems.

Comments

Switching to Linux is much simpler

[stooo]

JUL
Linux Rocks

Re:It's not as simple as "just switch over"

[BarbaraHudson]

[[and they can always leave a few isolated XP boxes up to support laser engravers and the like.]]

Not if they have software or hardware has to have a network connection for 3rd party licensing purposes. .

That's the future for Windows 10. Your network goes down, you don't just lose your "cloud", but the ability to do pretty much anything. They'll make sure they keep a local cache of the start menu ads, "for your convenience during the interruption of service."