First things first

A story discussing the problems of the City of Detroit provides some instruction on the importance of maintaining your tech infrastructure, whether you are a municipality across the county or a private business here in Boston.

That city has fallen on hard times, ending in bankruptcy. And during the bankruptcy, several issues emerged that point out the importance of proper maintenance and investment for your technology systems.

One problem was the city was still using Windows XP on 85 percent of its computers. Support for this operating system ended in April of this year, meaning it no longer receives security patches or other fixes, leaving it more vulnerable than modern operating systems.

With cyber security becoming an ever more problematic area, keeping an old OS like XP is dangerous. While expensive to upgrade such a large system, that upgrade is probably far less expensive than the cost of a breach and the litigation that would follow.

In addition to creating functional issues and forcing work to be done manually that should be done by the computer, the lack of effective computer security may cause innumerable business and legal issues, that can result in litigation, breach of your contracts, and as the recent Sony breach, disclosure of confidential information.

Those disclosures can be embarrassing or, if sensitive financial or personal information is hacked, it can damage your business relationships, both monetarily and in terms of goodwill.

A regular and ongoing review of your businesses potential cyber risk to these issues is essential, as you cannot successfully maintain or grow your business if you are hobbled by deficient computer systems.

Fivethirtyeight.com, “Before Detroit Can Move On, It Needs To Upgrade From Windows XP,” RYAN FELTON, DEC 9, 2014