i've been hearing a lot from security experts
you don't know if your remote employees are using windows 7
at home on their personal devices and that can be a big security risk
so what are some of the security threats associated with windows 7
and how can you prevent them stick around
hey everyone welcome back to today in tech I'm Juliet Beauchamp i'm here
with computer world contributing editor preston gralla and of course our windows
expert so preston thank you so much for calling and chatting with me today
thanks for having me so i am curious what are some of the
immediate security risks and potential security threats
associated with still using windows 7. you know we know
that microsoft isn't patching anything but what does that
mean for you know your remote workers that
may be using it still yeah it's a very very very serious
problem because what it means starting in january this this previous january
just in time for the pandemic uh microsoft stopped supporting windows
7. what that means is no more patches and especially no more
security patches now there's constant threats evolving for
every operating system particularly for windows 7 because it's
an older operating system and hackers really
target older operating system and so now there are no security patches
and so what that means for security is pretty simple
you're computing without a safety net you're going over a chasm you don't know
if you're going to fall but if you fall it's all over because
all that has to happen is a hacker just needs to get into
even a device at somebody's home they can use that to crawl through a network
they can for example when somebody connects using
something called remote rdp remote device protocol what can
happen is they can then get directly into your server so basically what this
means is that you are completely open when you when an
employee uses windows 7. and i have to say one thing about this
which is that it's not just home users a surprising number of enterprises still
have windows 7 devices now i'm not sure how many of that are but to
give you a sense of the scope of the issue
is that according to stat counter which measures this kind of thing
20 of all windows pcs in the entire world
are running windows 7. what does that mean well some estimates say that means
200 million devices are running windows 7. so
it's a big problem there's a reasonable chance that if you're an i.t
you're supporting people who are using windows 7 either at home
even in an enterprise device at home and so they're wide open
basically is what it comes down to wide open to any kind of attack
now it's scary but there are things that you can do in the short term in the
long term of course the answer is simple get them off windows 7 get onto windows
10. you have to do that in the long run the pandemic is extreme but it's the new
normal people are going to be remotely computing for as long as there are
computers you need to get there obviously now's a tough time to do it so
there are things you can do in the interim
first thing is you can actually get security patches
for windows 7. you're just going to have to pay for it's called
extended security updates and for people who
have windows 7 enterprise or windows 7 pro
you can buy those updates it's 25 per device per year um that's
for enterprise fifty dollars per device per year for pro
that number's doubling and so that means 50 and 100 for enterprise
100 and 200 for pro that's an estimate by the way because there's all kinds of
tricks and stuff like that and you know big if you use a lot of devices maybe
you're going to get a break on it but as a rule of thumb that's what you
should do and it's clear buy it because the cost of a security
bridge is incalculable really to your
enterprise so you really need to do that um another thing to keep in mind it's
not just windows 7 itself that needs to be
patched you're running a lot of software on top
of windows 7 and if you're running windows 7 there's a reasonable
chance you're using old software or you're using the windows 7 client
version of software which might be extremely out of date now
windows 7 is vulnerable and so are windows 7 clients i'll give you the
scariest example zoom which plenty of people who work
have been using over the last four months or so and will
be using for a longer time the windows 7 client of zoom had a
security hole in it not the windows 10 version but the windows 7 version
now the day after that was found zoom patched it right away but zoom patched
it that doesn't mean individuals patched it
so if you're an i.t you got to make sure that everybody
patches not just you know esu for windows 7
but patches the software running on windows 7 like zoom like anything
they need to regularly look for every piece of software
it's not just software it's also browser plugins
flash um java anything like that a lot of these are old and outdated in
fact a lot of them already even supported anymore
so you gotta get rid of those and then finally there is a lot of software if
you're running windows 7 you're probably running some really old
software and a lot of that software may no longer be supported and has no
security patches and you can't even update it get rid of it
i mean it's really really insecure so it's
go ahead it kind of feels like you just never want to be the low-hanging fruit
here right it just i mean if a hacker is going to have a
lot easier of a time getting into any system through a windows 7
hole or a security issue they're going to go for that
because it's just going to be the easier it's just going to be the easier get for
them that's exactly right i mean you hit it
right on the head there in fact i'll give you a perfect example there is
an old exploit around called blue keep now i talked a little before about
remote desktop protocol remote desktop protocol is a way to
connect to an enterprise network and use all the
resources of that network there is an attack called blue keep blue
keep if somebody is using rdp blue keep allows them to get into
the server um blue keep if you if you're running
windows 10 you don't need to worry about it
blue keep on windows 7 you can get in through windows 7 via blue keep and so
there's a lot of other malware like that out there
and so you're right they're going after windows 7 in fact there's a security
expert who says anybody who's using windows 7
today is in his words a sitting duck
and so uh it's bad it's bad out there if you're using windows 7 it
i know it's it sounds like i'm trying to scare you out there
and uh it's true i am trying to scare you because the truth when it comes to
windows 7 and security is scary and it's
especially scary now just like julia says
they're gone after you you have to really be careful
so i'm curious too you've already sort of said
and it seems like you know the widely agreed upon
opinion is if you're still on windows 7 the first thing that you want to do or
the best thing that you should be doing is getting off of it as soon as possible
but i'm wondering to about
these are all of these remote workers right and like i said in the beginning
something i've heard a lot from security experts is
if you all of a sudden ask all of your employees to work from home you know
rightfully so they may not have work devices or you know work laptops and
or they might just have a work desktop at in the office but they're not
bringing that home to their house or maybe they are in some cases
but if i'm you know an employee at your company
and you told me to work from home and i now only have my personal device that
happens to be running windows 7 what is the
what's the solution for me what would you recommend it teams in that situation
do obviously giving every employee a brand new work issued laptop with
windows 10 is going to be extremely expensive
that's a great question and it's a great question because it
isn't necessarily even going to know who has windows 7 who is windows 10 out
there i mean you can't protect what you don't
know what exists right i mean you need to know first of
all what do people have and then you know not just what hardware
do they have what software do they have what software
do they have running on top of the operating system there's a lot of things
you need to do to manage all this and um so what you need to do is you
need some kind of remote management tool um now if you're in an
enterprise that uses a service provider to to do a lot of your it or even your
security uh you can outsource your security parts
of security if you have any arrangement like that with a service provider
immediately talk call them and find out what remote tools do they have you may
be surprised it's a surprising number of these service providers have these
remote tools that allow you to find out what devices
are being used out there what services do they use are they using
rndp or what software do they have and um so
check with your service provider first of all
use those remote tools to manage devices remotely the way you're probably
already managing servers remotely and so the same tools for
for managing servers may well also help you manage devices
um if that falls short if you don't have a service provider or they don't have
remote tools there are a lot of third-party remote tools out there
or one from microsoft itself microsoft has one called
intune and intune is designed exactly for that
to manage remote devices so my recommended recommendation would be
check with your service provider if not go to intune from microsoft or another
third-party one when you do that find out you know just
look at every single device on your network when i say on your
network these days i don't just mean your physical network because
there's not many people on that physical network anymore i mean in your extended
network so use remote tools to find out what
they're using once they do that you know take control of the patches you can't
always rely on individuals to do the patches you use remote tools
to do the patches use remote tools to uninstall software
um make sure to do things like internet explorer is the default browser
on windows 7. don't use it it's insecure so remotely
you could change the default browser and everybody to for example
um edge for chromium or chrome or firefox so if you do all that
as a remote i.t person you're going to be in pretty good shape not just for
today but for the future because it
let's hope the world doesn't get this bad again but there are going to be
other problems there'll be other epidemics pandemics with global warnings
there's warming there's going to be storms so
get used to the future start using remote tools so it feels
like in the long term the solution is obviously get off windows 7 but it does
seem like these remote tools are something that are going to be
definitely helpful in the short tour short term
or especially when you know your team just doesn't have the budget to upgrade
everyone to windows 10 for example right that's true and actually you know
these remote tools are not just a short-term solution because as i've been
saying you know this is the future this is not a one-off what
we're living through right now and so you need those remote tools not
just for windows 7 you need them for windows 10 because let's face it
uh windows itself is the hacker's biggest target in the world for a simple
reason it's what everybody not everybody but
the vast majority of people in the world use
is always in securities in windows whether it be windows 7
windows 10 or whatever else microsoft is going to be cooking up
so start using remote tools now they'll be very helpful for windows 7
but even for windows 10 and whatever you have coming out in the future
will be useful for that as well sure because not only is it you know a great
time it's i think that this time especially
is a great time to deploy these remote tools and these you
know remote access management whatever it may
be because i mean everyone's in the same
boat all you know all of your employees or almost all of your employees are
remote right now and then you can prepare like you
mentioned for future instances in which there perhaps is mandated work
from home or even just i think this experience is going to open
up a lot of companies to hiring people you know around the world
because as we've learned it doesn't necessarily
you don't necessarily need to live within you know
an hour of your office if you can do a lot of your work remotely
so it also just is important to make sure that you're able to
remotely manage remote employees you know all the time
not just right now very good point because a lot of enterprises already are
already saying you know what work remotely in the future if you want
facebook 50 000 employees they've already said they're employees
you know what um if you don't want to work in silicon valley
or or san francisco if you want to work someplace else
we're going to let you do it now some not all employees there are some they
want you know on-premise but other than that
tens of thousand employees just in one company are going to be allowed to do
this so yeah you're absolutely right this is the way the future is going to
be and you know and it's not just remote
tools that also they should be testing out now but it's also
remote ways of getting everybody into the same network even though
they're living in different places so one example of that would be having a
single source of truth what that means is
have a website or a series of websites where people know
you know how do i find out what's really going on at the company or
in the world as relates to the company um don't let it
people whisper or send emails or something like that have a single source
of truth that has on it all the information about what's live
and what's not live what's down what's up what are the
security protocols you need to use what tools that are enterprise approved
for remote access should you be using those kinds
of things so in addition to tools themselves there's also sort of a new
way of working that it needs to get used to
well thank you so much preston i really appreciate you calling in and chatting
with me it feels like there's some really good tips here
and just more information so you know it teams can make better informed decisions
about the remote employees and you know make sure that their remote
employees are being safe while we're all still working from home
for i mean in some cases for the foreseeable future or in other cases
like you mentioned with facebook for ever so i really appreciate it thank
you so much thanks for having me and thank you all
so much for watching this episode of today in tech
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if you have any questions about windows 7 security or how to remem
how to manage your remote workers if they're on windows 7
please leave them in the comments below and i'll get back to you or i'll get
back to you on preston's behalf thank you all so much again for watching
and i'll see you next time