London Metropolitan Police's 18,000 Windows XP PCs Is a Disaster Waiting To Happen (mspoweruser.com)

According to MSPoweruser, the London Metropolitan Police are still using around 18,000 PCs powered by Windows XP, an operating system Microsoft stopped supporting in 2014. What's more is that the police force is upgrading its PCs from Windows XP to Windows 8.1, instead of Windows 10. Only 8 PCs at the police force are reportedly powered by the "most secure version of Windows right now." From the report: From the looks of things, the London Metropolitan Police will continue to upgrade their systems to Windows 8.1 at the moment. Windows 8.1 is still being supported by Microsoft, although the mainstream support for the OS is set to end on the 9 January 2018. Microsoft will offer extended support for the OS until 2023, which means Windows 8.1 is still a much more secure alternative for the Metropolitan Police than Windows XP. Windows 10 still would have been the best option in terms of security, however. Microsoft is releasing security updates for the OS every month, and the new advanced security features like Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection makes PCs running Windows a whole lot more secure. The spokesman of the 0Conservative London Assembly said in a statement: "The Met is working towards upgrading its software, but in its current state it's like a fish swimming in a pool of sharks. It is vital the Met is given the resources to step up its upgrade timeline before we see another cyber-attack with nationwide security implications."

Comments

Re: Windows is not the way.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your suggestion is that sometimes people need to use computers to do things. If you ever need to install any real non-laughable software, you're not likely to find anything that runs on your suggesed OS.

Re:Virtualization?

[IonOtter]

Running a VM doesn't take all that much in terms of processor power, but it requires a lot of memory (RAM), usually around 4GB or more. The problem is that 4GB is right at the limit of what XP can use. You want to have at least 8GB of RAM to run smoothly, but that means you have to upgrade to Win7-64 at the very least.

And even if you're running a VM, the machine can still be infected, and act like a vector to spread the virus through the network. So you have to have a firewall and virus scanner, just like a hardware machine.

And since we're dealing with previously unknown zero-days, neither of those are of much use. Indeed, they may be worse than useless, as we're starting to find out.

Re:I love this crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they care about long term stability? A PM will last 1-2 terms tops, so their sole motivation is to be elected in the next cycle. They will always choose a saving now over a saving in 10 years time. That's why they do silly stuff like sell natural monopolies and fail to cover asset maintenance costs.

I remember reading

[rsilvergun]

that Theresa May pulled about 18,000 police off the beat. It was one of the reasons her party got beat up in the last election. This is small potatoes compared to that. But either way it's pretty obvious the problem is a lack of funding...