Windows Server 2012 reaches End of Life: What It Means for Businesses

Windows Server 2012 and R2, will officially reach its end of life on Tuesday 10th October 2023.

Scary. End of life (EOL) means that Microsoft will no longer provide updates, patches, or security fixes for Windows Server 2012 R2. This termination of support poses several challenges and risks to businesses that continue to use this platform past the EOL date.

We explore the ramifications of this for your business and examine how Lineal can play a role in shaping the future of your server infrastructure.

So, what are the issues now facing clients?

Security Risks: Without regular security updates, Windows Server 2012 becomes vulnerable to new and evolving cyber threats. Hackers often target systems running on unsupported software, as they are more likely to find unpatched vulnerabilities to grant unauthorised access to company data. Using server hardware outside of its product lifecycle hinders the ability to detect and respond to security incidents in real-time, increasing the window of vulnerability to cyber threats.

Compliance Issues: Many industries and regulatory bodies require businesses to maintain up-to-date and secure systems. Using an unsupported operating system like Windows Server 2012 can lead to compliance violations under Cyber Essentials and ISO Accreditations. 

How can Lineal resolve them?

  1. Upgrade to a Supported Server: The most straightforward option is to upgrade to a newer and supported Windows Server operating system. Windows Server 2019 or the latest version 2023 offers enhanced security, performance improvements all supported by our technical expert team.
  2. Migrate to the Cloud: Many of our clients are adopting cloud solutions like Microsoft Azure. These offers scalable, secure, and managed server solutions that eliminate the need for on-premises hardware alongside reducing the burden of server maintenance costs through pay-as-you-go and reservations payment models.
  3. Virtualisation: If a full server upgrade is not feasible immediately, consider virtualisation solutions like VMware. These allow you to run Windows Server 2012 in a controlled and isolated environment while planning your migration strategy meaning each virtual server can run its own operating systems independently.

The end of life of Windows Server 2012 signifies the importance of staying current with technology to ensure security, compliance, and compatibility. Our team is ready to assist your business in transitioning away to a more appropriate solution for securing your company’s data.


End of an Era for Windows Server 2012

Windows Server 2012 and Server 2012 R2 will be declared end of life (EOL) as of 10th October 2023, after which the operating system will receive no new security updates.

This leaves organisations using Server 2012 with several options:

– Re-license and migrate to a newer operating system if hardware supports it.
– Migrate those server workloads into a cloud platform like Microsoft Azure.
– Replace those server workloads with web-based applications.
– Purchase new server hardware with a supported operating system.
– Purchase specialist Extended Security Updates (ESUs) until 2026.

Which option to choose depends on where a business is their replacement/hardware lifecycle, budgets and changing workplace requirements. For some, a move to a newer version of Windows Server (2016, 2019 or 2022) is still possible, but this isn’t the only option. Don’t forget to check out Lineal’s handy flow chart on what to do when faced with the choice of replacing a server.

How and when to replace servers is a complex question, and businesses increasingly have far more cloud-based and software-as-a-service (SaS) choices available than a decade ago. Bundled services like Microsoft 365 have increasingly replaced the on-premises Exchange server, the file server and more for many small organisations – making the heavy capital investment for a server impractical. In the face of increasing hardware and energy costs, running on onsite server also looks increasingly expensive.

In some ways the end of Server 2012 represents the end of an era – in 2012, server sales were just beginning to recover from the financial crash. A decade on, both PC and small volume server sales look bumpy, while the largest server manufacturers appear to be focusing ever more sales attention on the data centre market – where there is growing appetite for enterprise hardware driven partly by the hosting and increasing consumption of those same cloud services.

For many small businesses in particular, a Server 2012 box may have turned out to be the last on-premises server they would ever purchase.

 

For Technical support and expertise, please contact our team today.


Exchange Emails Face Blocking

Microsoft have announced plans to throttle, and eventually block, emails sent from on-premises and hybrid Microsoft Exchange Servers that remain unpatched.

“Persistently vulnerable” servers will receive incrementally stricter controls, beginning with throttling (delayed delivery) up to and including a complete block beyond 90-days, preventing onward delivery to other Microsoft-based email accounts such as those in Microsoft 365/Exchange Online and Outlook.com.

The dramatic move puts yet another large question mark over organisations relying on on-premises Exchange server hardware. While Exchange 2003, 2007, and 2010 are now rare, Exchange 2016 still remains in surprisingly widespread use, and many copies of Exchange 2019 are not regularly patched against known vulnerabilities.

Extra controls will apply to servers that run on outdated or unsupported software or haven’t been patched against known security bugs – to help Exchange admins identify unpatched or unsupported on-premises Exchange servers, and allowing them a chance to upgrade or patch before they become security risks.

Recent times have seen a string of major vulnerabilities against Exchange server – including by the Chinese hacking group Hafnium.

Even in 2023, A simple Shodan search still shows thousands of Internet-exposed Exchange servers, with many still waiting to be secured against attacks targeting them with ProxyLogon and ProxyShell exploits, two of the most exploited vulnerabilities from 2021.

 

For cyber security advice and expertise, please contact our team today.


DNS Vulnerability: Your IT Team to the Rescue

July 14th: as Microsoft flag a ‘Critical’ Level-10 DNS vulnerability on Domain Name System (DNS) servers worldwide, Lineal engineers rush to patch the infrastructure of dozens of organisations overnight.

The Microsoft Security Response Center recently released details of CVE-2020-135, a ‘Critical Remote Code Execution’ weakness deemed ‘wormable’ (potentially spreading between devices automatically) affecting all Windows Server versions.

A grade of 10.0 is the highest possible severity level that can be assigned under the Common Vulnerability Scoring System Calculator. For comparison the WannaCry attack, which temporarily crippled the NHS in 2017, had a CVSS rating of 8.5.

Lineal staff use remote monitoring software to administer large numbers of client servers and devices, monitor hardware health and deploy patches more rapidly – and were quickly on the case overnight to patch the vulnerability as a special emergency.

dns vulnerability conversation

Within 8 hours we’d patched a large number of DNS servers – applying both an initial fix and further scheduled updates.

DNS is a naming technology which translates the identities of computers, servers and other networked devices into the IP addresses used for connecting on private and public IT networks.

dns how stuff works diagram

For this reason, DNS servers often have massive reach, and must be carefully protected to mitigate the risk of compromising an organisation’s technology on a huge scale – even across the globe.

Israeli IT security firm Checkpoint Software Technologies, who discovered the 17-year old hidden bug and reported it to Microsoft, argue ‘this is not just another vulnerability’ and risks handing an attacker ‘complete control of your IT’ if IT admins fail to address the issue urgently.

 

For IT expertise and support, please contact our team today.


Microsoft announce end of support for Windows Server 2008

Support and security updates for Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 operating systems will end in January 2020.

Customers operating Windows Server 2008 will then cease to receive security patches and other important system updates.

Around 70% of the world’s server operating systems are Windows based, with Server 2008 one of the most successful versions, still representing more than half of these installations as recently as 2016.

Users of Server 2008 and 2008 R2 have just over 6 months to decide whether to upgrade to a newer version of Windows Server (such as the long-awaited Server 2019, hardware permitting), replace servers with newer models, or migrate those server-based processes to a cloud-based platform, such as Microsoft Azure.

‘Mainstream’ Support for Server 2008 is unlikely to be extended – having already been granted temporary extensions, once from July 2013 to January 2015, and again to the final deadline next year.

As with previous operating systems, enterprise customers will have the option of purchasing ‘Premium Assurance’ support packages of different levels, to extend support as late as 2026 – but as with other legacy Windows products, for increasingly high associated costs.

Businesses will need to weigh up for how long they can afford to delay upgrading, or depending on the physical server hardware, whether it makes more sense to spurn the licensing costs of upgrading the Windows Server version and go directly to either the cloud, or a new server.

 

For IT infrastructure support and expertise, please contact our team today.


Windows Server 2003 vulnerability for 1 in 5 businesses

Windows Server 2003

Nearly 1 in 5 Windows Server users are still running Windows Server 2003 at great risk, more than a year after Microsoft announced end of security support for the product, new findings have shown.

Research by Spiceworks and Cloudphysics both found that 18% of Windows Server licensing market share is still taken up by Windows Server 2003, based on data recorded in June 2016. More than 53% of those surveyed also still ran one or more instances of Windows Server 2003 somewhere in their organisation.

Anyone still using the old software risks becoming vulnerable to security threats, which Microsoft will no longer address, with many organisations potentially being in violation of their compliance, insurance or regulatory obligations for data protection.

The continuation of Windows Server 2003 (which Tech Radar last year touted as potentially “the biggest security threat of 2015”) has been left unresolved within many companies, many of whom believe they lack a clear decision, expertise, or funds to replace the now unsupported operating system.

In the short term the best measure is risk mitigation: isolate any Windows Server 2003 systems as much as possible to prevent access by outside security threats.

But sooner or later, all companies will need to upgrade important systems, and those that do make the move are less likely to invest in the capital expense of physical hardware as they were over a decade ago – with increasing numbers likely to utilise an outside IT provider to migrate to a managed virtualised solution, for example business cloud services.

For Windows licensing support or guidance, please contact Lineal today – 01271 375999 or click here.