This is Susan Bradley for CSO Online. Are you ready for the end of life of adobe flash in your
environment microsoft recently announced that they are planning to phase out flash support
in its operating system by the end of 2020 as more firms and websites are moving to html5 webgl and
webassembly the need for flash has diminished to an all-time low microsoft is ending support for
adobe flash player on microsoft edge both the new and the legacy as well as internet explorer 11.
in the fall of 2020 an update titled as update for removal of adobe flash player will be made
available via microsoft update catalog windows update and with sus in the summer of 2021 all
apis group policies and user interfaces that specifically govern the paver adobe flash player
will be removed from microsoft legacy and internet explorer via the latest cumulative update on the
windows 10 platform at that time currently when you go to page that has an adobe flash
you'll get a pop-up in the corner saying a pop plugin has been blocked edge the new edge
based on chromium currently blocks flash because they know they're going to be phasing out flash
internet explorer still supports it as well as old edge so what happens if you're an enterprise
that relies on flash for some line of business application you do have some options first off
adobe has indicated that you can reach out to their vendor they are working with licensing
partner harman to provide enterprises with support and security options for flash
then you'll want to look at some configuration options that will allow you to control some of the
notifications starting with the june 2020 release of flash you can configure flash player to only
allow content from a list of allowed websites you can explicitly allow flash on content you trust
and block all other content remember in the new edge based on chromium
flash is disabled by default chrome in particular is starting to also block it by default as well
now you can go on farther and proactively disable flash now on your windows edge deployments to
ensure that no one is able to use it to do so you'll want to review the group policy settings
and download the proper adm file into your central store settings the group policy setting for edge
is underneath administrative templates windows components microsoft edge and you can see it says
allow adobe flash if you do not want employees to use it in your office environment you can click on
disabled and it will stop them using flash enviro in your environments flash isn't the only platform
that's also getting to be to the end of its life recently the center for internet security released
on his blog site an end of support software report list they do this once a month and in
the august 2020 version of the listing you can see that office 2010 is also coming to its end
of life in october of 2020. to be exact after october 13th of 2020 office 2010 will no longer
receive security updates microsoft tracks its end-of-life software on their websites and they
they offer several listings including also office for macintosh as well for 2016 version is
coming to its end of life office in particular is risked risky to be running after its end of life
office is often used by attackers to gain more access to a system typically every month office
has at least one remote code execution its macros are being used in attacks its
preview panes often are used in tax bottom line running on office 2010 after october
13th is going to be very unwise and very risky you would need to make sure any machine that is still
running on office 10 does not have access to the internet or does not talk to another system that
has access to the internet bottom line it's not wise to be running end-of-life software
after the due date goes by after october 13 2020 your risk level will slowly and steadily grow as
more and more vulnerabilities will be discovered in office 2010 and you won't be patched for it
take the time to review your organization for any out of date or soon to be out of date software
examine your options and review what risk you face from the software you're running on your systems
take an inventory know what risk you're facing out of date software that is not patched anymore
can leave you extremely at risk until next time this is susan bradley for cso online
check out more videos on the youtube video channel idg tech talk thanks and stay safe
you