Andre Yoskowitz
13 Apr 2014 23:39
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has confirmed that it could not migrate all of its computers from Windows XP in time for the April 8th support end-of-life, and will now have to have Microsoft millions of dollars for security patches.
Microsoft ended public security patches for the 13-year-old operating system last week, but will still offer private patches for companies that pay for extra support. Without the patches, systems running XP are vulnerable to being exploited and attacked.
Of the IRS's 110,000 computers, 52,000 have been upgraded to Windows 7, but the agency could not raise the additional $30 million needed to migrate the rest. Microsoft announced the end-of-life dates for XP back in 2008.
The new commissioner of the IRS, John Koskinen, said the agency had $300 million in IT projects on hold due to budget cuts in the past years, including the migration to Windows 7. Because they could not complete the upgrades, the IRS will likely have to pay near $10 million for just one year of Microsoft "Custom Support" for the operating system.
As of now, Koskinen says they will take money from their enforcement budget to complete the move by the end of 2014.
Source:
Computerworld