India Finally Decides It’s Time to Leave Windows XP Behind
Banks required to abandon the old OS before June 2019
By Bogdan Popa ·
Windows XP no longer receives updates since April 2014, but some
organizations are only now planning to upgrade to a newer operating
system.
India, for example, has issued a notice for all banks in the country
requiring them to implement new security systems and eventually abandon
Windows XP entirely by June 2019.
In the memo released last week, the Reserve Bank of India says that the
transition off Windows XP has until now progressed slowly, so wants to
see further migration efforts by mid-2019.
“The slow progress on the part of the banks in addressing these issues
has been viewed seriously by the RBI. As you may appreciate, the
vulnerability arising from the banks’ ATMs operating on unsupported
version of operating system and non-implementation of other security
measures, could potentially affect the interests of the banks’ customers
adversely, apart from such occurrences, if any, impinging on the image
of the bank,” it says.
"Additional security methods"
The first thing banks should do is implement additional security
measures, like BIOS passwords and disabling USB ports by August this
year. Banks are also required to apply the latest patches and disable
auto-run on their ATMs in the next couple of months.
Then, by March 2019, all banks should secure ATMs with anti-skimming
solutions and implement whitelisting filters to make sure that only
allowed software runs. RBI wants at least 25 percent of the ATMs to be
upgraded from Windows XP by September, while by December, the progress
should reach 50 percent. By March, 75 percent of the cash machines must
be on a newer operating system.
Windows XP has a 4 percent market share worldwide despite no longer
getting any security fixes for more than 48 months. It was launched in
2001 and is considered to be one of the most successful products ever
released by Microsoft.
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