Windows 7: Over three million PCs in Germany with insecure operating system

Microsoft completely discontinued support for Windows 7 around two years ago, but the outdated operating system is still in use in Germany. According to a report, more than three million PCs in Germany are still running the outdated and insecure Windows operating system.

Windows 7: Over 3 million PCs use outdated operating system

As a new study by security company Eset reveals, around three million PCs in Germany are still using the insecure and outdated Windows 7 operating system. In total, there are 2.7 million PCs still running the version of Windows released in 2009 in Germany.

Combined with Windows XP and Windows 8, which are also still in use in this country, the number rises to over three million PCs and notebooks. Since these systems no longer receive security updates, they are particularly vulnerable to attacks.

Companies and government institutions can currently still purchase security updates for Windows 7, but in the long term a switch to a more modern operating system will be mandatory here as well.

Grossly negligent

In a year, support for Windows version 8.1 will also expire. It, too, is currently still in use on 1.3 million PCs in Germany. Thorsten Urbanski, security expert at Eset, considers the use of outdated software to be “grossly negligent.”

For private users and companies, this can also be extremely expensive in case of doubt, because there is a liability risk when using an old and insecure operating system. Who does not worry about the update of its operating system, offends according to estimate of the experts also against the European data protection basic regulation (GDPR). This requires the “current state of the art” when processing and using personal data.

Positive trend

At least Urbanski sees an upward trend, as many PCs in this country were updated to Windows 10 or Windows 11 just last year, he said. There were around two million fewer insecure Windows computers last year than the year before.

Incidentally, Windows 10 is used by around 44 million users in Germany, who are thus on the safe side. The successor Windows 11, which will not be introduced until 2021, has not yet been included in the statistics.