The reported estimated that nearly eight out of every 10 organizations contained in a report covering a period from January to June have a 'high enough prevalence of SP2 in their environment to warrant immediate action to update their systems.' In a research note (click here for the PDF), Softchoice said its analysis of 278,498 corporate and public sector PCs reveals that almost half are still running Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2. If organizations aren't already on top of this, they should be moving quickly to update their systems.' 'Microsoft announced the expiration date in April of 2008, yet 45 percent of the machines we looked at are still running SP2.

'We were surprised by the number of people who have not yet deployed Service Pack 3,' said Dean Williams, Services Development Manager for Softchoice in an e-mail statement. Support retirement notwithstanding, many enterprises may choose not to upgrade to Windows 7 just yet and may not even upgrade to XP Service Pack 3, according to one researcher. The end of support for XP SP2 comes nearly a month after the software giant issued a security advisory about the remote code execution bug that can be triggered when a Windows user in an Internet Explorer session clicks on a links in specially crafted Web pages or e-mail messages. While Windows 7 is getting decent reviews along the lines of security, there's no doubt that Redmond is aware of the irony of ending support at the same time that it combats a Windows Help and Support Center vulnerability in all currently supported versions of XP. Okay, more specificially: after July's Patch Tuesday (July 13) Microsoft will no longer release security updates for XP Service Pack 2. In less than a week after you read these very words, Microsoft will wind down support for one of its most popular enterprise operating systems ever: Windows XP.

Plus: Developer ignoring DEP and ASLR at peril what the global 'spamscape' looks like. Security Watch Researcher: End of XP SP2 Support Means More Risk

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