In a recent report by the Federal News Radio, John Zangardi, the acting Chief Information Officer at the US Department of Defense, emphasized the need for completing the Department's migration to the latest version of Microsoft's OS. Zangardi also promised to have almost the entirety of the Department's systems on Windows 10 by the end of the year.
Another facet of the DoD's focus on upgrading its software appliances is the creation of the Defense Enterprise Office Platform, which would aim to combine "voice, email, video and content management platforms as well as communication tools into a single unified client."
This comes as part of a larger initiative at the DoD 'to maximize capability and lethality, reduce the cyber attack surface, understand the department’s information technology infrastructure and build up efficiency and effectiveness.' He deemed the need for greater technical efficiency and flexibility of paramount importance in allowing the DoD to optimize its systems to create new functionalities for its infrastructure of planes, ships and tanks, as well as allowing the Department to used the saved costs to invest in upgrading said infrastructure.
The news regarding the DoD's plans for modernizing its systems could not have come at a better time, as a worldwide ransomware attack has sent many governmental agencies still using unsupported versions of Windows spiraling across the world. Not only was the exploit used in the attack patched by Microsoft on Windows 10, but the attack seems to also completely ignore the latest version of Windows, instead focusing on older versions of the OS.
Source: ExecutiveGov via MSPoweruser
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