Today Microsoft announced through their Technet blog, that there are providing an extension of support for Microsoft Windows XP antimalware products – the drop-dead date had previously been April 8th, 2014. On that date, both updates for XP itself, and the security products provided by Microsoft were to stop.
The updates are still stopping on April 8th, but Microsoft announced it will continue to release updates for Microsoft Security Essentials (Home users) and System Center Endpoint Protection, Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection and Windows Intune for business users.
The current date for dropping updates for these security products is now July 14th, 2015. So users of Windows XP can enjoy an additional 15 months of updates before their operating system hits the chopping block.
Microsoft still advises to consider XP as an ‘end-of-life’ product, but this extension is to ease the migration to newer operating systems.
Our take is that you should move as quickly as possible to newer versions of Windows -and that running Microsoft security products is not a good strategy for security. Always run a premium antimalware solution from a trusted vendor – and always keep your operating system and software (including Java, Adobe Reader and other ancillary software) up to date.