It’s not just the CIA and NSA’s reputation shattered into a million pieces by the ransomware vulnerabilities scandal, but Microsoft’s, too.
Microsoft. It’s the formerly people-ready company that is now mobile-first and cloud-first.
Sadly, what the company has never been is people first.
Did you like the way Windows 7 worked? Sorry, Windows 8 obliterated that. Did you like the way your Start Menu worked? Sorry, Windows 10 still doesn’t work as well as the old start menu. Classic Shell exists and is everything the old Start Menu isn't, but the otherwise awesome, must-have Classic Shell installer did get hacked a while back. I guess it's no different with Microsoft being hacked, eh?
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Did you wish you could have a skin that instantly transformed your Windows desktop into whatever previous version of Windows you wanted and worked exactly the way the old system did, while having all the modern underpinnings you need?
Sorry, not possible from Microsoft. You can pay extra to a third party, but any vulnerabilities in that are your own concern.
Did you think Microsoft offered you any kind of warranty or delivered any kind of genuine customer support when you purchased its products?
You did? Then read the EULA or end-user licence agreement. Once you’ve paid your money, Microsoft owes you very little at all, if anything.
Now comes the major vulnerabilities scandal. For years, people thought Microsoft was actually working with the NSA and had backdoors in Windows.
For all we know, that’s been true all along, although with Microsoft’s President slamming the NSA and CIA, they’re at least pretending that was never the case.
Even so, Microsoft pays how many programmers to do what, exactly? It doesn’t appear that they’re doing any kind of genuine penetration testing to any kind of strict and resolute ultra-high standard.
Why is it that the NSA, CIA, Russian hackers, Chinese hackers, North Korean hackers and anyone else can find vulnerabilities that Microsoft can’t?
And what’s all this nonsense about no longer providing security updates to certain versions of software? As long as people are using those programs, Microsoft has an obligation to keep on protecting them.
Sure, there comes a time when you can’t offer that protection any more, but when you still charge big organisations money to provide XP updates, why not offer that service, at a low cost, to consumers too?
I know a gentleman who HATES what Microsoft has done with Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10. He still uses Windows XP to this day. It has been protected with the patches for the POSReady version of Windows used in restaurant terminals, and the emergency update Microsoft offered for XP was also installed yesterday.
This fellow just wants to keep on using XP, and if he was forced to use a newer version, to have a new version that is skinned identically to the old version.
The same story goes for those with Office 2007 and up, who have wanted a simple switch to have the old menus back.
There is a thing called Add-in Tools Classic Menu, but it’s another third party thing.
Then let’s get to updating your apps. Sure, there’s Ninite for Windows - but where is Microsoft offering such a tool by itself to help end-users ensure their computers are properly protected?
Yes, Microsoft wants to go to its Windows 10 S and Microsoft Store lock-in. But we don’t live in that world yet. We live in a world where Microsoft could be genuinely proactive and protective of its customers.
Sadly we don’t live in that world. Even Microsoft’s ‘Windows Defender’ software was recently discovered to have 'crazy, bad' vulnerabilities going back years. Yes, it was patched a week or so ago, but WTF Microsoft?
It’s clear that using any technology, be it Microsoft’s or someone else’s like Apple’s or Google’s comes with a giant risk that you can be spied on, cameras activated, microphones turned on, private files slurped - if the right vulnerability is exploited.
The out and out spying in 1984 isn’t just a science-fiction book and theme by George Orwell, it’s a reality today for at least some people, if not damn well all of us, thanks to the NSA, CIA and any hacker that wants to target you.
Companies need to understand that privacy, security and safety are the number 1 most important things.
A lesson that Microsoft obviously has still to learn.
