10 Security Tips for Windows XP Loyalists
Sticking With WinXP? 10 Things You Must Do.–PC Pitstop
By Stu Sjouwerman, for KnowBe4.com Security Awareness Training
I’m sure you know that April 8 2014, Microsoft will stop supporting Windows XP and stop creating security updates for XP as well. That means that when after April 8, 2014 another security bug is found in Windows XP, (a certainty) that bug cannot be patched anymore, and your PC or laptop that runs XP will be very easy for the bad guys to get into. Microsoft on their website states: “PCs running Windows XP after April 8, 2014, should not be considered to be protected. ”
So now, if you are stuck with XP, here are 10 things you should do to make sure it’s not going to be cake-walk for the bad guys to penetrate your network. It’s already easy enough. My business partner Kevin Mitnick is always happy to hear that a penetration-test customer has XP running in their network, as that makes his job that much easier. Here are the 10 points:
1. Make sure you deploy the very latest XP update so that those machines start out their afterlife as “healthy” as possible.
2. Isolate the old XP devices on separate “dirty” networks to make sure the compromised XP boxes do not infect new machines.
3. Keep these XP machines behind a hardware firewall like a NAT router.
4. Reduce the attack surface and get rid of all unused (third-party) apps, and disable Internet Explorer.
5. Install Google Chrome, which supports XP until at least April 2015, Use the VIEW option of Chrome as much as possible.
This excerpt appears with permission from knowbe4.com.
