Security News > 2020 > May > The Windows 7 Postmortem: What’s at Stake
In January 2020, Microsoft officially ended its extended support and discontinued patching of Windows 7.
Despite the long lead time and repeated reminders, numbers since the COVID-19 pandemic have shown a slight uptick in Windows 7 deployments.
The recent estimates show that more than 26 percent of endpoints were still running Windows 7 as of March, most likely due to organizations deploying older machines to support suddenly remote workers.
Recently global manufacturers reliant on internet of things devices were hit with a malware campaign that exploited weaknesses in Windows 7 directly tied to the Server Message Block protocol.
The use of Windows 7 after EOL without paid extended support leaves any organization at risk and unable to meet the 24/72 Mean Time to Hardening threshold.