When my older daughter started middle school I was invited to the website where her grades were available real-time.  They’re updated continually by her teachers based on every quiz, homework assignment, and test that she takes. This is a substantial improvement over infrequent report cards and teacher meetings, giving me the ability to detect, early on, any areas needing greater focus (not that it’s needed with my straight-A student). Unfortunately, when I checked the security of the site, I found that “secure login” was optional and, in the case of the middle-school’s implementation, everything was completely unsecured. This included not only my kid’s grades but also the ability to look her up and message her directly. While the school fixed this very quickly, it highlights how easy it is for site operators to miss even the most basic of security practices. As more education is done and administered online, the bar is only getting higher for institutions to protect their student data as well as their own. 

As the world’s largest security company, we continually ask how we can educate people about security and whether the sites that they are visiting are secure. The bottom line is that it needs to be simple — yes or no. The Norton Secured Seal communicates that “yes, this site is secure” to more people than any other seal or browser-based visual cue. Behind the scenes there’s a lot that goes into the display of that seal… Is the data encrypted? Is the site run by a legitimate company? Is the site free from Malware? Only when the answer is yes to all of these questions will visitors see the Norton Secured Seal.

In honor of Digital Learning Day, we are doing our part to both keep people secure and to educate the world about security. Combined with our 24/7 support team, we hope to increase security at educational institutions and let them easily train their visitors to look for the seal that tells them that they’re secure.  

Pesquisadores da Symantec identificaram uma porcentagem alarmante de aplicativos que coletam e enviam informações pessoais valiosas para os desenvolvedores de apps. No começo do ano, a empresa deu início a testes de tecnologia beta para efetuar uma varredura em apps Android antes do download e identificar vulnerabilidades e riscos à privacidade com a ferramenta própria, Norton Mobile Insight. Nossa tecnologia descobriu que informações pessoalmente identificáveis (PII na sigla em inglês) como o número de telefone do aparelho, nomes de usuário, senhas, detalhes de calendário, informações de registro de ligações, até mesmo fotos e mensagens de texto são regularmente acessados por apps que podem não ter motivos para isso.

É impressionante observar que quase um terço dos aplicativos avaliados pelo Norton Mobile Insight vazam informações do SIM card, como detalhes da agenda de contatos, números PIN móveis e histórico de chamadas. Além disso, cerca de 13% (ou quase 2 milhões) dos apps Android analisados pelo Norton Mobile Insigh enviam o número de telefone do usuário para além do aparelho.

Pesquisas recentes da Symantec[i] indicam que a maioria dos clientes se preocupam com esse tipo de risco de segurança e privacidade dos aplicativos móveis. No entanto, as conclusões sugerem que os consumidores são seus piores inimigos quanto à privacidade móvel. A maioria dos consumidores, sem saber – as vezes intencionalmente – colocam informações pessoais em risco, comprometendo sua própria privacidade. Na verdade, o estudo mostrou que muitos dos que mais se preocupam com a privacidade móvel são os que menos tendem a tomar precauções para se proteger – tudo em troca de downloads gratuitos de aplicativos.

Os consumidores sabem mesmo o que estão baixando?

Para entender como os consumidores percebem os riscos à segurança e privacidade criados por aplicativos móveis, pesquisamos mais de 6 mil pessoas em nove mercados ao redor do mundo (relatório da pesquisa disponível para download aqui). O que descobrimos sobre as percepções de consumidores comparadas aos dados do nosso Norton Mobile Inside foi:

• Nossa pesquisa global com consumidores indica que as atividades com aplicativos mais divertidas incluem jogos (55%), ouvir música (50%) e assistir vídeos (41%). As conclusões do Norton Mobile Insight indicam que apps “gratuitos” que os consumidores baixam para entretenimento representam os maiores riscos, incluindo a maior incidência e gravidade de violações de privacidade.
• Setenta por cento dos entrevistados relataram maior preocupação com a proteção de informações financeiras e senhas/nomes de usuário. O Norton Mobile Insight mostra que estas são algumas das classes de dados mais protegidas em smartphones. Por outro lado, mais de um terço dos entrevistados do mundo entregariam prontamente seus detalhes de localização em troca de um aplicativo grátis.

• Dois de cada cinco entrevistados não se preocupam nem um pouco com o risco de pegar um vírus em seu smartphone. Um em cada quatro admite que não sabe exatamente com o que concorda ao baixar um aplicativo. Na realidade, os riscos à segurança móvel estão crescendo rapidamente. Famílias conhecidas de malware móvel aumentaram 69% e amostras conhecidas de malware móvel quadruplicaram entre 2012 e 2013.

• A maioria dos entrevistados se preocupa com o risco de pegar um vírus no smartphone; porém, os usuários preocupados são também os mais dispostos a permitir que apps usem a bateria, controlem o uso de dados e acessem contatos, informações de atividades físicas e fotos – muito mais do que os usuários que não se preocupam com o risco de vírus.
• Ironicamente, aqueles que se preocupam com o risco de pegar um vírus no smartphone pensam que entendem as permissões dos aplicativos mas, na realidade, estas pessoas são quase tão desinformadas quanto as que não se preocupam.

(Observação: Gráfico inclui apenas comparações norte-americanas)
Quando baixa um aplicativo, com quais dos itens abaixo você está concordando… (% Total)

(vermelho) preocupados com vírus           (azul) não preocupados com vírus

Fornecer sua localização             Permitir publicidade na barra de notificações Acesso a suas informações pessoais e fotos    Uso ilimitado da bateria                      Permitir acesso à câmera e ao microfone do meu smartphone    Uso ilimitado do plano de dados              Modificar seus marcadores no navegador       Não estou ciente de nenhuma das opções

No centro da questão, consumidores não leem acordos de licença para usuário final (EULA) ou não necessariamente entendem com o que estão concordando antes de baixar aplicativos. Muitos usuários não entendem como podem comprometer a própria privacidade ao aceitar as permissões de apps. De acordo com nossa pesquisa global:

• Um em cada quatro entrevistados não sabe que os aplicativos podem modificar os favoritos no navegador, acessar a câmera e o microfone do aparelho, ou enviar fotos para o desenvolvedor do aplicativo. Quase metade dos entrevistados em todas as regiões não sabe que os aplicativos podem enviar detalhes de sua localização física.
• Mais de dois terços dos entrevistados não notam que os aplicativos instalam publicidade na barra de notificações, enquanto 20% dos aplicativos analisados pelo Norton Mobile Insight colocam este tipo de publicidade em aparelhos móveis.
• Os entrevistados mais velhos (55 anos ou mais) parecem mais conscientes como o grupo com maior probabilidade de admitir que não sabe como um aplicativo pode impactar seu smartphone.
• A geração Millennial (entre 18 e 34 anos) tem maior probabilidade de afirmar que sabe quais informações está concordando em fornecer, mas obtém pontuação igualmente baixa em conhecimento real.
   

Comportamento Móvel Seguro

Hoje estamos dando um passo para capacitar e proteger os consumidores, incluindo novas capacidades de privacidade móvel no Norton Mobile Security e Norton Security. O Norton agora analisa e identifica aplicativos problemáticos para Android antes que o download seja feito – algo pioneiro no setor de soluções móveis de segurança.

Além da análise proativa de aplicativos, Norton Mobile Security e Norton Security automaticamente protegem os usuários móveis, bloqueando sites fraudulentos (phishing), bloqueando remotamente um smartphone perdido ou roubado, localizando um aparelho perdido, e capacitando aparelhos perdidos a tirar fotos e exibir mensagens customizáveis.

No atual mundo conectado, aparelhos móveis são mais do que mini computadores em nosso bolso – são armazéns digitais que guardam nossos momentos e informações mais pessoais, como fotos e vídeos, conversas com parentes a amigos, informações de saúde e atividade física, dados financeiros e muito mais.

Uma série de práticas seguras para proteger-se contra as ameaças móveis atuais também pode ser vista aqui. Você pode baixar um infográfico que destaca as principais conclusões de nossa pesquisa com consumidores de aplicativos móveis aqui.

Security analysts at Symantec predict that 2015 will continue to bring an increase of new threats and exposure of vulnerabilities to mobile devices, tablets, PCs, and laptops. What does this mean for enterprise mobility? We dive into three timely concerns for any IT organization that manages and protects information on mobile devices.

Prediction #1:  Mobile devices will become even more attractive targets

Mobile devices will continue to be a target for cyber attackers especially when mobile devices store up a trove of personal and confidential information and are left switched on all the time. A recent Norton Report states that the number of mobile threats that track users increased last year from 15 percent to 30 percent. In the past 12 months, 38% of mobile users have experienced cybercrime to some degree. Mobile devices will become even more valuable in 2015 as consumers and retailers adopt mobile payments, like Apple Pay and Google Wallet. For companies, confidential data including emails, customer information, and internal applications accessed on a mobile device are incredibly vulnerable if they are not well secured, especially on unmanaged devices. And leave no doubt that the executive officers are typically the first target for hackers.

Prediction #2:  Privacy will continue to be sacrificed for mobile apps

Protecting corporate data in today’s mobile environment is a significant challenge for IT. Mobility introduces new risks in the enterprise such as employees adopting unapproved or cloud-based apps for work, corporate data leaking into unmanaged or cloud-based apps, unauthorized access to corporate data, and lost or stolen devices. Users continue to trade their privacy in exchange for mobile apps, purposefully or not.  For example, many mobile users are reluctant to share banking and personally identifiable information, but are willing to share access to location, photos, and contact lists in exchange for free mobile apps. Many are simply tapping the “OK” button and not realizing the security risks to both personal and corporate data.

Prediction #3: Contextual-based policies will extend to mobile

No longer will simple device-based or even app-based policies be sufficient. Sophisticated companies will embrace contextual-based security for managing access to data on mobile devices. Similar to how online financial and healthcare accounts detect when you login from a new browser or require additional identity authentication when accessing the account for the first time, mobile devices will soon be treated with the same amount of rigor for corporate access. Factors to determine the level of access will go beyond simple passwords to include a “background check” on device hardware information, location data, biometric data (such as a fingerprint), and even user context, such as app activity and work hours.

Recommendations:

• Add threat protection to your EMM solution.  With a threat protection solution, devices can be protected from malicious threats such as backdoors, mobile malware, grayware, malicious websites, and data stealing apps.  Look for products that provide proactive protection like scanning and evaluating apps prior to download from app stores as well as blocking access to corporate resources based on app behavior..
• Look for app wrapping technology.  App wrapping protects corporate apps and information by layering security and policy controls without compromising the user experience.  Wrapped apps enable the end user by providing a clear separation of the enterprise and personal data on the device.
• Leverage contextual policies to assess and remediate against risk.  A solution with a strong contextual policy engine enables admins to mitigate risk with a dynamic, policy-based approach. Leverage real-time assessments to enforce policy based on factors such as location, behavior, device, apps, etc.
   

To learn more about Symantec mobility solutions, visit our website.  Please follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

Not yet complete, but here are the first changes neede to implement a checkmark in filters for monitoring/reporting on all statuses, except Auto-Protect = on. So this includes: Auto-Protect=off, not installed or not reported.

<SEPM Home>\\Php\Include\Inventory\inventory-input.php:

line 21, add after this:

<input name="filOnOff" type="hidden" id="filOnOff" value="<? echo $filOnOff;?>">

one extra input, resulting in:

<input name="filOnOff" type="hidden" id="filOnOff" value="<? echo $filOnOff;?>">
<input name="filApNotOn" type="hidden" id="filApNotOn" value="<? echo $filApNotOn;?>">

File <SEPM Home>\Php\Include\Inventory\inventory-sqlfilter.php

after lines 133-136:

$queryOnOff=optimize_checkbox_neg($filOnOff, "SA.AP_ONOFF");
if ($queryOnOff) {
    $filterSettings["LABEL_ONOFF"]=$filOnOff;
}

add another 4 lines, resulting in:

$queryOnOff=optimize_checkbox_neg($filOnOff, "SA.AP_ONOFF");
if ($queryOnOff) {
    $filterSettings["LABEL_ONOFF"]=$filOnOff;
}
$queryAPNotOn = $filAPNotOn=='on' ? "SA.AP_ONOFF != 1" : "";
if ($queryAPNotOn) {
    $filterSettings["LABEL_AP_NOT_ON"]=$filAPNotOn;
}

and after line 320:

".Queries::optimize_and($queryOnOff)."

include one new line, resulting in:

".Queries::optimize_and($queryOnOff)."".Queries::optimize_and($queryAPNotOn)."

You are not finished, see next parts.

We created the Customer Trust Portal to simplify doing business with Symantec. Our customers trust us as their go-to provider for security products, solutions, and information management. As a result, they gain confidence that we value and understand the significance of their trust.  This effort makes it easier for customers to access frequently requested certifications and documents.  The Customer Trust Portal provides customers with a deeper understanding of how Symantec keeps customer data secure. The site contains such information as:

• Frequently requested security certifications and attestations such as ISO certifications (for the parts of Symantec's business that are ISO certified), PCI compliance, SSAE 16/SOC 1 and SOC 2 reports, WebTrust certificates
• Frequently requested documents such as  Certificate of Insurance, a summary of Symantec's Business Continuity Program, and references to Symantec's publically available Privacy Policy, Financial Statements, Section 508 Compliance Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (VPAT), and government representations and certification

On the right side, there are Product Family Links and Entity Level Links for security certifications, frequently requested information, and public sector compliance. Customers can use these links to find the information that is most relevant to them.  A small section of the site covering security certifications and reports requires a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), but customers can join the group within minutes, gaining access to these confidential documents.

As Joel Fulton, Director, Customer and Supplier Trust, explains, the Customer Trust Portal is a big win for Symantec’s customers. “As we were working through customers’ security concerns, we found that we often were asked the same questions about access to certifications, documents and attestations. This self-service portal addresses those common questions and concerns, and we hope that it will positively impact the decision of customers to buy and expand Symantec’s services.”

If you or your customers have any questions about the Customer Trust Portal, please email the Customer Trust Office.

Who’d be a CIO? The role has never been more demanding, nor more fraught with complexity. Yet all too often that role, in its present guise, is much misunderstood by those outside of the realms in which CIOs now move. Anyone who thinks back to what was asked of a CIO just a few years ago might think the demands of the job, while challenging, haven’t changed that much. They would be wrong.

First and foremost, the threat landscape has itself altered dramatically of late, with consumers subject to constant spear phishing attacks, while both public and private organisations are hard pressed at every turn to protect their biggest asset, information. How bad has the threat level become? To answer that, you need look no further than the recent slew of web vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed or ‘Shellshock’ that made headlines globally. The repercussions of these within the business environment are likely to be felt for some time, as criminals seek out the most susceptible servers and subject them to concerted attacks.

Today’s CIO not only has to ensure the business is protected at all turns, but equally must play a key role as a strategic business advisor. However, that role is not always recognised and embraced as it might be at boardroom level – something that needs to change, if the CIO is to fulfil that role to its fullest and deliver greatest value to the organisation.

Connecting IT and presenting innovative IT projects to the CEO or CFO must now be done in a way that ensures a balanced approach to risk management is achieved. The IT department has traditionally been averse to risk, while a business and its leaders need to embrace risk to be successful. Their mutual positions need not only to be recognised and respected, but seen as the fulcrum on which the well-being of the business is balanced.

In today’s digital world, when it comes to cloud and the vast quantity of data now being stored, there are a number of critical factors for a CIO and the wider business to consider, in order for them to work effectively together. Data residency across EMEA is going to become a more prevalent discussion and here we are helping a number of customers to create their own processes, based on best industry practice.

Knowing where your data is before you start (or redesign) cloud strategies is simple to say, but hard to achieve. CIOs tell us that, while they know that half of their stored data is redundant, they just don’t know which half. That is why being a CIO today has moved to new realms; where protecting the business is paramount, in the face of ever-growing threats, yet the means to do so is not always clearly part of the corporate strategy.

We are currently seeing two complications: data explosion and data duplication. Data is growing to the tune of 100-200% year on year, and we’re seeing that up to 70% of data can be duplicated. As a huge amount of money is being spent on storing and backing up that data, the Internet of Things is only going to make this duplication issue more problematic.

With information today’s currency – the lifeblood of an organisation – the determination of cyber criminals to target and exploit will continue to rise. As a highly valuable commodity, the CIO needs to have a clear understanding as to what information is valuable to his organisation, if he is to be in a position to protect that data. Delivering this discussion and communicating it in business language is vital in breaking down the boundaries between IT and the board.

Check out the new eDiscovery Platform 8.0 demos on the Symantec Support YouTube channel.  

Today GSMA announced the nominees for the 2015 Global Mobile Awards, and Symantec was selected as a nominee for “Best Mobile Service or App for Enterprise.”

This category recognizes organizations that have introduced the most innovative mobile tools to help corporations or enterprise users to work smarter and “do business better” on the move. This award seeks to recognize innovators and market driving operators, vendors and app developers that deliver best in class products and solutions to the enterprise.

“For many companies, having the ability to securely manage at the app and data level provides the most flexibility and efficiency to meet business needs, and we are honored to be recognized for having an innovative, market-leading solution to meet this challenge,” said Travis Grandpre, director of enterprise mobility.

Symantec Mobility: Suite is focused on providing the best user experience without sacrificing data protection. With Symantec, companies can save time and resources of managing devices for employees and confidently support BYOD with our leading-edge, dynamic app management and mobile threat protection technologies. Mobility Suite includes Work Mail, a secure email/PIM application, Work Web, a secure Norton Safe Search-enabled browser, and Work Hub enterprise app store and content app, and provides access to third-party apps in the Symantec Sealed Partner Program. There are now over a dozen third-party Sealed apps available in app stores, allowing companies to provide employees with the most efficient and user-friendly productivity tools, including Webalo, Polaris Office, FileBrowser, MobileSputnik, and Accellion Kiteworks.

The winners for each category will be announced on Tuesday March 3rd at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Visit our booth at Mobile World Congress March 2-5, 2015

Learn more about the products at: www.symantec.com/mobility

The releases of Symantec IT Management Suite 7.6 and Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 3.0 are rapidly approaching. Please join us for a special webcast on Tuesday, March 3 to learn about these new solutions and how they will make your life easier.

• IT Management Suite 7.6 includes several new enhancements to cloud-enabled management, deployment, administration, and reporting.
• Ghost Solution Suite 3.0 is the first major release for this solution in several years and will introduce a new console and many new improvements while maintaining its core capabilities as one of the leading deployment and imaging solutions in the market.
• Deployment Solution 6.9 also has some exciting updates that will be shared during the webcast.

Don't miss this great opportunity to get the latest information on IT Management Suite 7.6, Ghost Solution Suite 3.0 and Deployment Solution 6.9!

Register now

When: 
Tuesday, March 3
11:00 am Eastern

What:
ITMS 7.6 and GSS 3.0 Webcast

Register now

According to Storage Newsletter.com, “the total software-defined storage market is expected to grow from $1,409.7 million in 2014 to $6,217.6 million by 2019, at a CAGR of 34.6% from 2014 to 2019”.

The interest in Software Defined Storage (SDS) comes as no surprise, with the promise of delivering both greater agility and enhanced quality of service (QoS) for applications, while exerting a tight rein on costs. The first fundamental step in achieving this is by abstracting storage capabilities dynamically delivered across physical or virtual devices, independent of location or class of storage involved. SDS is now the direction in which the industry is heading and represents everything that Symantec has been doing and innovating for the past 20 years in the storage space.

The Symantec Cluster File System has SDS at its heart, with all of the key elements built in that the technology has been designed to deliver to enterprises. It’s worth taking a look at these in some detail:

Storage Virtualization– presents storage as a large pool of capacity to the server, allowing for better performance of the application. That is a core functionality of what Symantec does with Storage Foundation today and indeed has provided for the past 15 plus years – virtualizing back-end storage and making it look like one big pool of capacity that servers can use.

Quality of Service– all applications accessing data from the storage pool get the same level of storage performance. However, all applications are not ‘born equal’: some applications are more mission critical than others. Which raises the question: how do you ensure the mission/business-critical applications get more? This is where intelligent software – and Symantec – comes in. Because a superior storage management layer will identify the critical workloads and optimize them… every time.

Flexible Storage Sharing (FSS)– this is unique to Symantec. We introduced FSS as a new feature at the back end of 2013, providing a “shared-nothing architecture” enabling organizations to utilize direct attached storage (DAS) while experiencing 400% better read and write performance at 25% of the cost of traditional Storage Area Networks (SAN).  Cluster File System provides a global name space across up to eight nodes. That means each server has the same view into the storage space and can share data across the nodes without the requirement of an expensive and complex SAN.  All of this can be done with all of the rich, advanced storage functionality at the user’s fingertips.

Crucially, what this delivers is:

• Flexibility– you can add and remove nodes easily. Also, any type of storage can be used by the nodes.
• Reliability– all this sharing doesn’t compromise reliability. Using data replication, multiple copies of the data are maintained across the nodes. That way, even if a node goes down, there is no loss of data.
• Support– we support InfiniBand as interconnects. We, of course, also support Ethernet. This again gives flexibility. Also, if customers were to go with InfiniBand, that drastically increases the interconnect speed and thus the performance of their entire set-up.

Advanced Storage Capabilities– this embraces features such as storage tiering, dynamic multi-pathing, thin reclamation, dedupe, compression, embedded cache for Solid State Devices (SSD), etc.: all features that are required for SDS and that Symantec has introduced to the market over the years. Also, we can deliver this across any platform, whether that is a legacy UNIX system, Linux, Windows or virtual machines. We are agnostic as to what platform you may be running or planning to move to in the future – or what kind of storage you might have on the back end.

However, there is more to the story, because all of this can be accomplished with SSDs as well. So, if you need high performance for a specific application, you can deploy SSD and Symantec can give you the software component to do all the things SSD cannot do stand-alone. That sweep and breadth of appeal is the reason why so many large enterprises have turned to our Symantec Cluster File System offering. At the same time, increasing numbers of mid-enterprise organizations are recognizing its advantages as well.

Ultimately, anyone running a mission-critical application on which their business depends can reap the Symantec Cluster File System’s many availability, performance and cost benefits.

For more information, please see the ‘Software-Defined Storage from Symantec and Intel: Applications in a Flash’ solution overview paper.

What’s Happening?

On July 14th, 2015, Microsoft will end support for all versions of Windows Server 2003. This means that Microsoft will no longer offer support, security patches and software updates for this product.

What are the risks of continuing to run Windows Server 2003 while unsupported?

Continuing to run Windows Server 2003 after July 14th will not only leave your network open to serious security vulnerabilities, there’s a possibility of system instability issues due to compatibility issues with newer hardware and software, and you can face compliance issues with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards and other industry regulations.

Some companies have custom applications that support critical business functions based on the Windows Server 2003 framework, and these applications may not work on a newer OS platform. The problem with this scenario is that most organizations don’t have a plan for how to migrate these workloads to a different application. However, this pales in comparison to the cost and resources that will be used to maintain and protect an outdated platform.

What are the options if choosing to continue to run Windows Server 2003?

The first option would be to do nothing. However, this will leave your network easily exposed to threats and attacks, as hackers often look for vulnerabilities in out-of-date software to exploit. As time goes on, Windows Server 2003 installations will become a very high target as they represent the least secure systems.

In addition to having a larger attack surface, there are also many technical issues that the server administrator will have to deal with. Windows Server 2003 was released over a decade ago and IT architectures have evolved dramatically since.

Windows Server 2003 runs in 32 bit mode only, which means it is not compatible with newer 64 bit modes, therefore it cannot make use of modern updated hardware and software in order to help accelerate performance.

The bottom line is that will lead to higher costs of server operations within the IT structure and will leave the network exceedingly open to emerging threats.

What about using custom support solutions?

While this option helps protect from high priority known threats, it does not protect against newly emerging threats such as zero-day vulnerabilities. In addition to insufficient protection, custom support agreements will significantly add to the already high costs of maintaining an outdated server.

Luckily, these are not your only options. In this three part series we will explore other options that are available - from better options to secure your server to full migration from the legacy systems.

On July 14th, 2015, Microsoft will end support for all versions of Windows Server 2003. This means that Microsoft will no longer offer support, security patches and software updates for this product.

What are the risks of continuing to run Windows Server 2003 while unsupported?

Continuing to run Windows Server 2003 after July 14th will not only leave your network open to serious security vulnerabilities, there’s a possibility of system instability issues due to compatibility issues with newer hardware and software, and you can face compliance issues with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards and other industry regulations.

Some companies have custom applications that support critical business functions based on the Windows Server 2003 framework, and these applications may not work on a newer OS platform. The problem with this scenario is that most organizations don’t have a plan for how to migrate these workloads to a different application. However, this pales in comparison to the cost and resources that will be used to maintain and protect an outdated platform.

What are the options if choosing to continue to run Windows Server 2003?

The first option would be to do nothing. However, this will leave your network easily exposed to threats and attacks, as hackers often look for vulnerabilities in out-of-date software to exploit. As time goes on, Windows Server 2003 installations will become a very high target as they represent the least secure systems.

In addition to having a larger attack surface, there are also many technical issues that the server administrator will have to deal with. Windows Server 2003 was released over a decade ago and IT architectures have evolved dramatically since.

Windows Server 2003 runs in 32 bit mode only, which means it is not compatible with newer 64 bit modes, therefore it cannot make use of modern updated hardware and software in order to help accelerate performance.

The bottom line is that will lead to higher costs of server operations within the IT structure and will leave the network exceedingly open to emerging threats.

What about using custom support solutions?

While this option helps protect from high priority known threats, it does not protect against newly emerging threats such as zero-day vulnerabilities. In addition to insufficient protection, custom support agreements will significantly add to the already high costs of maintaining an outdated server.

Luckily, these are not your only options. In this three part series we will explore other options that are available - from better options to secure your server to full migration from the legacy systems.

Learn more here: W2K3 Migration Landing page: http://go.symantec.com/2003migration

On July 14th, 2015, Microsoft will end support for all versions of Windows Server 2003. This means that Microsoft will no longer offer support, security patches and software updates for this product.

What are the risks of continuing to run Windows Server 2003 while unsupported?

Continuing to run Windows Server 2003 after July 14th will not only leave your network open to serious security vulnerabilities, there’s a possibility of system instability issues due to compatibility issues with newer hardware and software, and you can face compliance issues with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards and other industry regulations.

Some companies have custom applications that support critical business functions based on the Windows Server 2003 framework, and these applications may not work on a newer OS platform. The problem with this scenario is that most organizations don’t have a plan for how to migrate these workloads to a different application. However, this pales in comparison to the cost and resources that will be used to maintain and protect an outdated platform.

What are the options if choosing to continue to run Windows Server 2003?

The first option would be to do nothing. However, this will leave your network easily exposed to threats and attacks, as hackers often look for vulnerabilities in out-of-date software to exploit. As time goes on, Windows Server 2003 installations will become a very high target as they represent the least secure systems.

In addition to having a larger attack surface, there are also many technical issues that the server administrator will have to deal with. Windows Server 2003 was released over a decade ago and IT architectures have evolved dramatically since.

Windows Server 2003 runs in 32 bit mode only, which means it is not compatible with newer 64 bit modes, therefore it cannot make use of modern updated hardware and software in order to help accelerate performance.

The bottom line is that will lead to higher costs of server operations within the IT structure and will leave the network exceedingly open to emerging threats.

What about using custom support solutions?

While this option helps protect from high priority known threats, it does not protect against newly emerging threats such as zero-day vulnerabilities. In addition to insufficient protection, custom support agreements will significantly add to the already high costs of maintaining an outdated server.

Luckily, these are not your only options. In this three part series we will explore other options that are available - from better options to secure your server to full migration from the legacy systems.

Learn more here: W2K3 Migration Landing page: http://go.symantec.com/2003migration