Half of SMBs and enterprises use near end-of-life OS

Just as many SMBs and enterprise workstations use Windows 7 as those that use Windows 10.

Almost half or 48% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises still rely on operating systems (OS) like Windows 7 or XP that are either unsupported or about to end support, according to Kaspersky research.

The study also found that 41% of consumers still use these systems, as well as 40% of very small businesses (VSBs).

"An old unpatched OS is a cybersecurity risk – the cost of an incident may be substantially higher than the cost of upgrading," Kaspersky enterprise solution manager Alexey Pankratov said.

Despite Windows 7 about to end extended support by January 2020, 38% of consumers and VSBs and 47% of workstations used by SMBs and enterprises still run this OS. For SMBs and enterprises, this is about as much as the share of Windows 10.

2% of consumers and 1% of VSBs rely on Windows XP, which has not been supported for over a decade. Less than half a percent still use Windows Vista, whose support ended seven years ago.

Across Southeast Asia, Singapore showed the lowest percentage of users of unsupported OS at 25.7%, compared to the Philippines (26.5%), Thailand (38.1%), Malaysia (40%), Indonesia (45.4%), and Vietnam (66.4%).

This is also the case for SMB and enterprises at 26.7%, lower than that of the Philippines (35%), Vietnam (44.6%), Indonesia (46.2%), Malaysia (50.5%) and Thailand (52.3%).

In the nation, 71% SMBs and enterprises used Windows 10, followed by Windows 7 with 26.4%, Windows 8.1 with 2.3% and Windows 8 with 0.3%.

Amongst consumers, Windows 10 has the most number of users with 68.7%, followed by Windows 7 (24.4%), Windows 8.1 (5.5%), Windows 8 (0.6%), Windows XP (0.6%) and Windows Vista (0.1%).