Microsoft has just announced that it is extending the support for Anti-Malware protection on Windows XP till July 2015. With this, Microsoft wants to bid more migration time to the existing Windows XP users.
The decade old operating system Windows XP is set to go off support by April this year. This originally implied that Microsoft won’t be pushing any security patches to the operating system as and when we hit the deadline.
In a blogpost, Microsoft writes,
Microsoft has announced the Windows XP end of support date of April 8, 2014. After this date, Windows XP will no longer be a supported operating system. To help organizations complete their migrations, Microsoft will continue to provide updates to our antimalware signatures and engine for Windows XP users through July 14, 2015.
To make things clear, Microsoft is not extending the deadline. Windows XP will still be unsupported after April 2014. But this Anti-Malware protection will make the operating system a bit more secure.
This does not affect the end-of-support date of Windows XP, or the supportability of Windows XP for other Microsoft products, which deliver and apply those signatures.
So what does this change mean to consumers?
The enterprise users will continue getting the following security protection: System Center Endpoint Protection, Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection and Windows Intune running on Windows XP. Whereas for normal users, Microsoft Security Essentials and Malicious Software Removal Tool will get you covered till July 2015.
Although Anti-Malware protection itself won’t make the operating system fully protected, since there’s a limited number of things it can do, it will come handy to tackle with a wide range of malware and help in trying to secure Windows XP, against the many dangers it may face. This is a welcoming change from Microsoft and shows how much it cares about its users.
