back to article Win XP security deadline: Biz bods MUST protect user data – ICO

The end of support for XP on Tuesday doesn't only mean increased risk from hackers exploiting vulnerabilities that will never be patched. It also creates a heightened data protection risk to businesses, the UK's data privacy watchdog has warned. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) also warned that the end of support …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Yeah, and we all fell for that ridiculous panic that immediately after 31 December 1999

    Grecian 2000 would stop working.

    1. Blitterbug
      Meh

      Re: Yeah, and we all fell for that ridiculous panic that immediately after 31 December 1999

      Ok, I'll bite. Off-topic, but the reason for the Y2K 'fail' is that around the world cohorts of system developers were dragged off current projects to revisit all extant source code and prune it religiously for problematic date handling. At Logica & CMG, for example, hundreds of man-hours were spent on this process. I personally was pulled off all current work to join in the effort to fix and re-distribute patched software to various blue-chip clients including banks & utilities.

      So the reason for the anticlimactic 'fizzle', I like to think, is that a shit-ton of preventative work was successfully implemented.

      Roll on the downvotes, I guess, from the unbelievers!

      1. Seanmon

        Re: Yeah, and we all fell for that ridiculous panic that immediately after 31 December 1999

        Seconded. I was at BT at the time.

        1. Wemb

          Re: Yeah, and we all fell for that ridiculous panic that immediately after 31 December 1999

          Yes, we spent millions and millions of pounds fixing the Y2K bug and in the end nothing happened.... Because we spent millions and millions of pounds.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Paris Hilton

            Re: Yes, we spent millions and millions of pounds fixing the Y2K bug

            Do you actually read the posts you're replying to?

            1. Blitterbug
              Happy

              Re: Do you actually read the posts you're replying to?

              Sometimes, Joe. Sometimes...

      2. big_D Silver badge

        Re: Yeah, and we all fell for that ridiculous panic that immediately after 31 December 1999

        Yep, I spent a good 18 months, along with dozens of other programmers, going over our companies products with a fine toothed comb in order to ensure that all our customers remained unaffected.

        It was a lot of work, revisiting thousands of COBOL, FORTRAN and BASIC source code files and ensuring the PICs and other declarations were correct and that the systems worked with a 4 digit date, with a sliding window for 2 digit date entry.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Facepalm

          Re: Re: Yeah, and we all fell for that ridiculous panic that immediately after 31 December 1999

          I know. I was one of those people, in my case in the MoD with a huge database of critical helicopter monitoring data and algorithms...

          It was a joke. I even used the joke icon to say it was a joke, for Frith's sake... *cries*

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yeah, and we all fell for that ridiculous panic that immediately after 31 December 1999

      Don't even joke about it man. That was SERIOUS. We all worked our asses off to prevent a disaster. If we hadn't patched all those systems they'd be telling us it's 1914 and then where would we be, all banging on about airships being the future of transport and perched on the edge of our seats waiting for Russia to get into a war over eastern Europe?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: Yeah, and we all fell for that ridiculous panic that immediately after 31 December 1999

      Dear The Register,

      I hereby return this 'Joke Alert' icon for replacement, repair or refund (at your discretion) on the basis that it has proven wholly defective in its intended purpose, to whit, indicating that the post it accompanies is not to be taken seriously, neither in whole nor in part.

      As an aside, may I also ask of your editorial team, as keen adjudicators of humour in the field of IT (as indicated by your hilarious fictional comedic segments 'BOFH' and 'The Channel') that you let readers know when such subversive humour as exemplified in the previous century by Messrs. Corbett and Barker (collectively known by the pseudonym 'The Two Ronnies') ceases to be considered so fucking controversial.

      With all due regard to your time and percipience,

      Yours Faithfully,

      Joe F. Ish Esq. BSC SSC No Monies Retun'd To Conclude with Rule Brittania in full chorus.

  2. heyrick Silver badge
    FAIL

    Dear ICO

    What is your official position on companies hosting their data on cloud setups, especially those that fall under American jurisdiction?

  3. John Deeb

    difference?

    "Tuesday doesn't only mean increased risk from hackers exploiting vulnerabilities that will never be patched. It also creates a heightened data protection risk to businesses".

    Maybe it's me but any supposed difference between vulnerabilities increasingly exploited by hackers and "heightened data protection risk" seems largely academic. It should have read perhaps: ..." this would include a heightened data protection risk to businesses and consumers".

  4. DNTP

    Wooooo happy April 8 everyone, %50 of my machines are running XP, we're taking this baby offroad!

    (and off the network, and duct taping over USB ports to keep stupid people from flashdriving these babies)

    1. SineWave242

      Whatever you do is not everybody's business.

  5. Bob Camp

    "Organisations regularly end support for their older products," Rice said.

    My company supports all of their products for 20 years. It's in all of the contracts. Our customers all request 20 years of support. It's not August 24, 2021, is it?

    Our customers put that clause in our contracts because they don't want us to EOL a product just to generate more sales for our newest product. Of course Microsoft would NEVER do that.

  6. zaax

    Does that mean ICO will buy my local hospital new microscopes at £4 million to replace the ones that run on XP which we bought 10 years ago, and do the job very well.

  7. pacman7de
    Facepalm

    Reaching end of life is a regular occurrence?

    "Dr Simon Rice .. explained that IT products reaching end of life is a regular occurrence. So the end of days for Win XP is just the same issue played out on a much grander scale."

    You would think that after ten years, all the security bugs would have been ironed out by now. As in old software is good software, as it doesn't have any more unexpected behaviour modes, unless the basic Windows security model is defective.

  8. SineWave242

    Yeah, believe it if you're low on brain.

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