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

Unfortunately they don't think of cross platform.

[jellomizer]

So you are on Windows now. That is all good and fine. However the majority of your Applications should be Web Standards Based developed in a easy OS portable language. With a database system available in multiple OS.

Because time and time again, The next generation of Computer/OS breaks a lot of compatibility and moving over to a new platform is a big headache.
Vs that web application developed in PHP back in 2003 while may not be pretty will still work on Windows 10 or the Bosses new iPad. Without having to rework the entire thing.

Re:What's wrong with XP?

[OrangeTide]

Pay-to-play, even if they pass the support effort on to a 3rd party contractor, would be nice for customers. But ultimately I think Microsoft wants everyone to buy new computers and new copies of their latest operating system. The planned obsolesce has always been about money, the security aspect is a convenient excuse to push that agenda.

As an example, SABRE (airline reservation system) has been running in one form or another since the 1970's. And even though ACP (IBM Airline Control Program, an operating system) was only officially supported for about 10 years ('68-'79), it continued to be used in production environments for decades after that.

But to be fair IBM was traditionally about selling big hardware and support contracts and not about selling software, a very different style of business compared to Microsoft.

Re:Simple solution

[The-Ixian]

I think you are assuming that every Windows release has different code.

I would be willing to bet that Windows 10 is basically Windows 2000 with updated UI and a few more drivers baked in to the kernel.

When a Windows vulnerability affects all previous versions of the OS, it's a strong indicator that this is true.