Now that Windows 7 has long past its end-of-life status, your organization must have all of its internet-facing and/or network-connected computers upgraded to Windows 10 or Windows 11. Learn more about Windows 11 and CurrentWare’s employee monitoring and cybersecurity software for Windows.
After a decade of support since its release in October of 2009, Microsoft has announced the end of life for Windows 7 and Office 2010. After January 14, 2020, Microsoft will stop providing free security updates or technical support for Windows 7 and Office 2010. Computers running Windows 7 after January 14, 2020, should no longer be considered protected.
If your organization continues to use Windows 7 after January 14, 2020, the lack of security updates puts your organization at a greater risk of cybersecurity vulnerabilities and may cause a breach in your data protection responsibilities.
The recommended path is to upgrade all of your Windows 7 computers to Windows 10. This checklist from Microsoft can help you get started on the transition. Medium-to-large organizations may want to consider hiring a Microsoft solution provider to ease their transition planning and execution.
Continuing to use Windows 7 after its end of life on January 14, 2020, will leave your organization vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. If your organization’s cybersecurity infrastructure is not maintained, it may also cause an at-fault breach in your data protection responsibilities or conflict with your existing data protection compliance agreements.
Serious cybersecurity threats have penetrated outdated operating systems before. On May 12, 2017 users of the legacy Windows XP operating system were not eligible for a critical security update, leaving them vulnerable to WannaCry, a ransomware worm that spread to 75,000+ computers in over 99 countries according to Europol, a European Union law enforcement agency. The infected computers had critical data stolen and encrypted with the threat of deletion if a ransom was not paid – and even then users report not getting their data back.
The costs for upgrading immediately to Windows 10 vary greatly depending on your current infrastructure and the needs of your organization. The costs can change based on the volume of licenses purchased, your existing Microsoft products, and any additional support you may need. For the most up-to-date information, you should visit Microsoft’s Windows 7 End of Support page.
While most systems in use today should be capable of running Windows 10, it is recommended that you upgrade to newer hardware if possible. To ensure your existing hardware meets the minimum requirements for Windows 10, review Microsoft’s list of system requirements for installing Windows 10.
Large scale upgrades are a massive endeavor and take time and careful planning to implement. If your organization is not in a position to upgrade immediately, purchasing Extended Security Updates will keep Windows 7 security patches up-to-date and protect your organization’s servers and desktops until January 2023 at the latest. ESUs are a costly alternative, but they can buy you valuable time to plan and implement your Windows 10 upgrade strategy.
There is promotional pricing available until January 14, 2020. Details on the promotional pricing can be found at this Microsoft Support FAQ.
As with the costs of upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10, the exact costs for purchasing ESUs vary greatly and at the time of writing this (December 2019), Microsoft has not officially released a pricing structure to the general public. The Windows 7 ESUs will be sold on a per-device basis and the price per device will increase each year. Organizations that opt to delay purchasing ESUs until later in the program will still need to pay the costs of previous years.
According to an article released by Microsoft, as of December 1, 2019 businesses with Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Enterprise can purchase ESUs through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program. You can find a qualified CSP at this site.
Volume Licensing customers can contact their Account Team CE for pricing and ordering information that is tailored to specific customer scenarios.
After considering the risks to your organization’s cybersecurity and assessing how continuing to Windows 7 will impact your data loss prevention strategy, you may decide that the needs, resources, and responsibilities of your organization do not require an update to Windows 10 at this time. After support for Windows 7 ceases on January 14, 2020, you will no longer be eligible for Microsoft technical support, software updates, security updates, and fixes. Your computers running Windows 7 will still continue to function as normal and Windows 7 will be considered a legacy operating system.
Legacy perpetual CurrentWare products from December 2019 are compatible with both Windows 7 and Windows 10. To ensure we can focus our resources on providing the best service and the latest features, new CurrentWare product releases in the coming years may eventually become incompatible with Windows 7.
If you own a perpetually licensed version of a CurrentWare product you can continue to use it as normal, though future updates to Windows 10 and internet browsers may require an upgrade to a CurrentWare subscription.
Customers still using BrowseControl v4, BrowseReporter v5.1, or releases prior to those may experience internet blocking issues in Windows 10.
Ready to upgrade your CurrentWare products? Our team is here for you. Contact us at info@currentware.com and we’ll guide you every step of the way.
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
__cfruid | session | Cloudflare sets this cookie to identify trusted web traffic. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement | 1 year | Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category . |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional | 11 months | The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". |
JSESSIONID | session | The JSESSIONID cookie is used by New Relic to store a session identifier so that New Relic can monitor session counts for an application. |
LS_CSRF_TOKEN | session | Cloudflare sets this cookie to track users’ activities across multiple websites. It expires once the browser is closed. |
OptanonConsent | 1 year | OneTrust sets this cookie to store details about the site's cookie category and check whether visitors have given or withdrawn consent from the use of each category. |
viewed_cookie_policy | 11 months | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
__cf_bm | 30 minutes | This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. |
_zcsr_tmp | session | Zoho sets this cookie for the login function on the website. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_calendly_session | 21 days | Calendly, a Meeting Schedulers, sets this cookie to allow the meeting scheduler to function within the website and to add events into the visitor’s calendar. |
_gaexp | 2 months 11 days 7 hours 3 minutes | Google Analytics installs this cookie to determine a user's inclusion in an experiment and the expiry of experiments a user has been included in. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_ga | 2 years | The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors. |
_ga_GY6RPLBZG0 | 2 years | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. |
_gcl_au | 3 months | Provided by Google Tag Manager to experiment advertisement efficiency of websites using their services. |
_gid | 1 day | Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. |
CONSENT | 2 years | YouTube sets this cookie via embedded youtube-videos and registers anonymous statistical data. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_opt_expid | past | Set by Google Analytics, this cookie is created when running a redirect experiment. It stores the experiment ID, the variant ID and the referrer to the page that is being redirected. |
IDE | 1 year 24 days | Google DoubleClick IDE cookies are used to store information about how the user uses the website to present them with relevant ads and according to the user profile. |
NID | 6 months | NID cookie, set by Google, is used for advertising purposes; to limit the number of times the user sees an ad, to mute unwanted ads, and to measure the effectiveness of ads. |
test_cookie | 15 minutes | The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies. |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | 5 months 27 days | A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. |
YSC | session | YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. |
yt-remote-connected-devices | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |
yt-remote-device-id | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |
yt.innertube::nextId | never | This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. |
yt.innertube::requests | never | This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_dc_gtm_UA-6494714-6 | 1 minute | No description |
_gaexp_rc | past | No description available. |
34f6831605 | session | No description |
383aeadb58 | session | No description available. |
663a60c55d | session | No description available. |
6e4b8efee4 | session | No description available. |
c72887300d | session | No description available. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-tracking | 1 year | No description |
crmcsr | session | No description available. |
currentware-_zldp | 2 years | No description |
currentware-_zldt | 1 day | No description |
et_pb_ab_view_page_26104 | session | No description |
gaclientid | 1 month | No description |
gclid | 1 month | No description |
handl_ip | 1 month | No description available. |
handl_landing_page | 1 month | No description available. |
handl_original_ref | 1 month | No description available. |
handl_ref | 1 month | No description available. |
handl_ref_domain | 1 month | No description |
handl_url | 1 month | No description available. |
handl_url_base | 1 month | No description |
handlID | 1 month | No description |
HandLtestDomainName | session | No description |
HandLtestDomainNameServer | 1 day | No description |
isiframeenabled | 1 day | No description available. |
m | 2 years | No description available. |
nitroCachedPage | session | No description |
organic_source | 1 month | No description |
organic_source_str | 1 month | No description |
traffic_source | 1 month | No description available. |
uesign | 1 month | No description |
user_agent | 1 month | No description available. |
ZCAMPAIGN_CSRF_TOKEN | session | No description available. |
zld685336000000002056state | 5 minutes | No description |