As you may or may not know, computers are everywhere whether
you realize it or not. They are running things that we don’t even think about
such as our cars and TVs. One place where it’s important to have a secure
computing environment is inside of ATMs. Since ATMs give us cash at the press
of a button, we don’t want them giving our cash to the wrong person.
Many ATMs use Microsoft’s Windows XP as their operating system
and Microsoft is going to be stopping support for Windows XP on April 8th
of this year. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use Windows XP anymore but it
will mean that there will not be any more security patches and support for the
operating system itself.
One news site reports that 95% of the world’s ATM machines
run on Windows XP and if it’s true this poses a serious security threat. If the
operating system of your ATM was not secure, would you want to put in your card
and PIN and risk someone getting your information and potentially your money?
Microsoft has been pushing Windows XP users and companies to upgrade their
computers for some time and many banks are now in the process of upgrading
their ATMs to avoid potential security issues. But will they get the job done
before it’s too late?
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