I must be getting old (OK, I know that’s hardly a surprise and I’m already quite old) but it’s hard to believe we’re knee deep in 2018 already.
It seems like only yesterday we were bemoaning 2016 as a standout bad year. Now we’re looking back and seeing what a catastrophic year 2017 was, at least for the IT industry.
It was in May that WannaCry struck. Although many organizations were unaffected there were some huge and notable victims including the UK NHS, and major global brands such as FedEx, Hitachi, Renault and many others were affected. It’s estimated there may have been more than 1 million infected devices worldwide.
What became apparent was that most infected systems were running Windows 7, not XP as initially thought. However, the victims had not applied a patch that had been available for some time.

play nice 2018


The 1E #StayCurrent report found that 86% of organizations weren’t prepared to handle WannCry but, encouragingly, 76% said they had increased their efforts to stay current with OS and application updates in an effort to prevent future attacks.
Since WannaCry, we’ve had NotPetya BadRabbit attacks, so the signs are that the pace of attack is increasing.


The key lesson to learn is that IT organizations must be more agile and nimble than ever to stay ahead of attackers.
Now’s the season of making resolutions for the new year, so make staying current top of your list. With less than 2 years until the end of service for Windows 7, that’s going to mean you should be accelerating your move to Windows 10 as part of that effort.
We can hope for 2018 be a nicer, kinder year for IT (and the world in general, hopefully) but vigilance is the real key to success.
Let “Get Current, Stay Current” be your mantra for the year.