Microsoft extended free support for Windows 7. It will extend it until the end of 2020 the period of for election machines that are used in the United States and other countries.
This is due to the inability to quickly transfer these machines to a more modern version of Windows to meet timeframes of the US presidential election.
Microsoft will extend the period of free support for Windows 7 installed on electronic voting machines, which will be used during the presidential election in November 2020.
“As the 2020 election approaches, we realize that a relatively small number of certified voting machines are running Windows 7. We also realize that the timely transfer of these machines to a newer operating system before 2020 is not possible for several reasons, including because of the long term certification of machines – the process during which we, together with government representatives, update the machines and make them more adaptive, ” – the company’s blog says.
Microsoft writes that certification, in which the company, along with government representatives, updates the machines, is a long process. The company notes that Windows 7 is installed on the “relatively small but significant part” of the election machines.
Recall that the free support period for Windows 7 expires on January 14, 2020. For election machines, it will be extended until the end of 2020.
“Since the term of free support will be extended for election machines used in the USA, the same will have to be done for machines used in other countries if these states are democratic according to the democracy index of the British company Economist Intelligence Unit“, – report in Microsoft.
That is, an exception will also be made for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Finland and several other countries.
The company made the exception made for the electoral machines for security reasons. During the election, these devices may undergo cyberattacks, so the OS on them needs timely security patches.
At the same time, Microsoft reports that, in general, Windows 7 is outdated in terms of cybersecurity.
“We launched Windows 7 in 2009 – the year the Palm Pre was launched, Twitter launched, navigation for mobile phones just hit the market, and floppy disks were still sold in the millions. The software created for that era cannot provide the same level of security as a modern operating system such as Windows 10”, – the company notes.
The decision was made within the framework of the Defending Democracy Program, which Microsoft launched in April 2018. The program is dedicated to strengthening the information security of the election process so that hackers could not influence it.
The program works in four areas: protecting elections from hacking, increasing the transparency of political advertising on the Internet, researching protective solutions for the electoral process, and combating the spread of misinformation.
Read also: Safety of Windows 7 and Server 2008 will ensure ACROS Security
The fact that Microsoft intends to discontinue any support for Windows 7 at the beginning of 2020 the company announced at the beginning of 2017,strongly recommending users, especially corporate ones, to switch to Windows 10 in advance.
The termination dates indicated for Windows 7 are broadly in line with Microsoft’s general policy for their products. However, the super-popular Windows XP OS was released in 2001, and finally its users were deprived of support on April 8, 2014, that is, 13 years after the release.
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