Microsoft has pushed back the end-of-support dates for two versions of Windows 10 alongside other products, as it looks to soften the blow for customers affected by COVIDd-19.
With IT staff across the globe forced to work from home and many firms hit financially by the pandemic crisis, Windows customers have little time and resources available to manage upgrades at present.
Microsoft seems to have take that on board with an announcement this week.
“We have been evaluating the public health situation and understand the impact this is having on many of our customers. To help ease some of the burdens customers are facing, we are going to delay the scheduled end of service date for the Home, Pro, Pro Education, Pro for Workstations, and IoT Core editions of Windows 10, version 1809 to November 10, 2020,” it explained.
“This means devices will receive monthly security updates only from June to November. The final security update for these editions of Windows 10, version 1809 will be released on November 10, 2020 instead of May 12, 2020.”
The news follows a similar announcement at the end of March relating to Windows 10, version 1709. The final security update for the Enterprise, Education, and IoT Enterprise editions of this product will now be released on October 13, 2020 instead of April 14, 2020.
Microsoft director of software engineering, John Cable, said at the time that IT teams that haven’t already should consider using Windows Update for Business, “which allows users to take both feature updates and quality updates directly from Microsoft in a secure and often faster manner.”
Concerns have also been raised by some security experts that organizations using legacy VPNs may struggle to apply patches, given that this infrastructure is already being stretched to the limits by the burden of supporting home workers.
“Many organizations are likely to encounter VPN failures and risks from delayed patches reliant on legacy on-premise patch management tools. VPNs are not designed to extend the IT perimeter and we are now faced with a situation where there is no functional perimeter for your organization,” argued Jay Goodman, strategic product marketing manager at Automox.
“Doubling down on VPN and legacy on-premise endpoint management solutions would be a knee-jerk reaction that does not take into consideration the long term cost efficiencies of embracing a digital transformation to the cloud.”
Other products that will see their end-of-support date pushed back include: Windows Server, version 1809; Configuration Manager v1810; SharePoint Server 2010, SharePoint Foundation 2010, and Project Server 2010; and Dynamics 365 cloud services.