Seems to be taking a long time for the word to get around. It's no longer safe to use that old hardware, running years-old OS facing the internet.


Um... no, I think the real lesson is to back up your shit. You don't need to pay shit to anybody if you can just pull yesterday's tape and restore. A million bucks will buy you a lot of backup equipment. If your data is worth that much, it's really not that hard to keep it backed up.

Good point.

Ok IT guys, I have a risk assessment question. We have a small network. Old linksys router connected to the internet via dsl. The router connects a printer, 2 Windows 7 machines that run some heavy equipment and an old xp machine for the map software. My question is how bad is it to have that xp machine on the network? Should I force the retirement of the mapping software?

Microsoft actually released am emergency patch for Windows XP to fix the flaw that WCry exploits. I wouldn't count on that sort of thing continuing to happen. Windows XP is no longer safe to connect to the internet. I would do whatever you can to retire that machine and replace it with a new one.

You could also connect all the computers and printers to a switch and connect the switch to the router. That would add a little extra protection. Furthermore, do all those computers really need to be connected to the internet?