By Legal Futures’ Associate QuillMicrosoft’s announced the end of its Windows Server 2008 lifecycle. Support and security updates will stop on 14th January 2020. Businesses must take action or their infrastructure and applications will be unprotected thereafter. This means increased vulnerabilities to cyberattacks in their varying sophisticated forms.
You see, cybercriminals consider outdated, unsupported systems as easy prey. Fall victim and your firm’s very existence is at risk. Think for a moment about the possible dangers…
- You suffer financial theft from fraudsters posing as your organisation and diverting your monies into their own account.
- You lose valuable data which you’re both unable to recover and receive fines from the ICO for failing to meet your data protection obligations.
- You’re held to ransom and have no alternative than paying a lump sum to attackers in order to get your operations up-and-running again.
- Any combination of the above arising from phishing, viruses, malware, spyware, SQL injection, eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle and denial-of-service attacks, to name a few.
Latest research reports 55% of British companies have faced a cyberattack this year with an average breach costing around £300,000.
Now’s the time to plan what to do in readiness for the January deadline. You have two options…
- Bury your head in the sand and migrate to a newer server such as Windows Server 2019. Depending on your practice, this will cost approximately £5,000 let alone the ongoing maintenance fee and, let’s face it, Windows Server 2019 will also reach end of life itself at some indeterminate point so it’s only a temporary fix.
- Address the problem once and for all by moving from on premise into the cloud. Quill’s Interactive legal accounts, case and document management system is a prime example. Cloud working has many benefits from automatic updates – relax in the knowledge that server maintenance is taken care of thereby freeing up your internal staff for other priorities – and enhanced security – ISO certifications and industrial-strength security measures keep your data, files and money safely stored – to reduced costs – simply pay-as-you-go with a software-as-a-service model thereby avoiding expensive upfront capex – and superior support – 24/7 helpdesk availability from your technology partner being the norm. There are many more advantages besides including mobility, resilience, collaboration, business continuity and disaster recovery.
Choose Interactive and you’ll never need to buy another server.
If saving money, overcoming ongoing upgrade hurdles, tightening security and improving back-up support is appealing (and why wouldn’t it be?), get in touch today. Call 0161 236 2910, email info@quill.co.uk or visit www.quill.co.uk/Practice-Management-Software.
