Kaspersky research: 41% of Windows 7/XP users have no desire to upgrade to Windows 10

Microsoft will drop its official support for Windows 7 systems on January 14, 2020, although there will be significant risks to continued use, consumers and business users do not seem to have much reason to upgrade. According to the latest research released by security vendor Kaspersky today, Windows 7 is still very popular among consumers, small and medium-sized enterprises and small and micro-enterprises.

Anonymous data collected with the consent of the user indicates that 38% of consumers and small and micro enterprises are still using the Windows 7 system. The good news is that Windows 10 is the desktop of choice for everyone. Currently, 53% of consumers use the Windows 10 system.

“Statistics show that a significant share of users, both individuals and businesses, still use workstations running outdated or approaching end of lifecycle OS,” said Alexey Pankratov, enterprise solutions manager at Kaspersky. “The widespread use of Windows 7 is concerning as there is less than six months to go until this version becomes unsupported. The reasons behind the lag in updating OS vary depending on the software in place, which may be unable to run on the newest OS versions, to economic reasons and even down to comfortability of routinely using the same OS. Nonetheless, an old unpatched OS is a cybersecurity risk and the cost of an incident may be substantially higher than the cost of upgrading. This is why we recommend that customers migrate to supported versions and ensure that additional security tools are in place during the transition period.”

Source, Image: Kaspersky