Think Microsoft Will Extend Windows 10 Support? Think Again

February 7, 2025

Later this year, Windows 10 will no longer be supported—October 15, if you want to be exact. Are you taking steps to ensure you’re upgrading away from Windows 10? If not, you might want to get on that… and consider upgrading away from Office, while you’re at it, since Microsoft is pulling support for that around the same time, too.

Again, it’s imperative that you take action now to prevent security breaches and operational issues moving forward. We want to discuss why it’s so important today.

Windows 10 is Still Incredibly Popular

In December 2024, Windows 10 was used by most individuals who utilize Microsoft products: 62.7 percent, to be specific, compared to 34.12 perent for Windows 11.

But why are these numbers so dramatically different? For one, the specs required to run Windows 11 are much more demanding than Windows 10. Hardware is expensive to implement, and it is only going to get worse in the near future, leaving most to consider the upgrade not worth it for the time being.

Of course, that’s failing to take into account the immense costs that could be associated with a security breach or disaster.

There’s No Ifs About Upgrading

On October 14, 2025, Microsoft 365 and Office applications (including Word, Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and others) will no longer be supported on Windows 10.

Whether you’re ready or not, if you’re a part of the majority still using the aforementioned services and solutions, you’ll be left with less secure, more buggy, and less reliable tools as time goes on. User security is the primary reason Microsoft is taking such a hard stance on this issue, but Microsoft is, of course, committed to CoPilot AI as a Windows 11 feature.

Your business needs to take action now, well ahead of the Windows 10 end-of-support date, or else you’ll get left behind.

First Column IT can help your business take appropriate action, whether it’s upgrading or implementing new solutions entirely. Learn more by calling us today at (571) 470-5594.

‍

How to Break the “Who Cares” Mindset

More often than not, you have an employee on staff who rolls their eyes whenever you have to send out another cybersecurity email or reminder. This “who cares” mindset is dangerous and can infect your business in a profoundly disturbing way. Today, we want to get into why this “who cares” mindset is so dangerous and what’s really at stake when you have an employee who can’t get on board with your security policies.

April 28, 2025

Learn How Resilience is Reshaping the Cybersecurity Landscape

While the goal of cybersecurity is always to prevent threats from taking advantage of your infrastructure, this is becoming more and more challenging as time wears on and threats evolve to changes in cybersecurity discourse. A recent podcast episode from Illumio, “Trust & Resilience: The New Frontlines of Cybersecurity,” explores how trust has become a vulnerability that attackers exploit in new and creative ways. How can cybersecurity as an industry pivot in response to this trend?

April 25, 2025

Everything You Need to Know About Business Tech Updates

While technology is an important part of your business, it shouldn’t be distracting you from carrying out your company’s mission. Indeed, it can be difficult to stay up-to-date on the latest practices and solutions, and it can feel impossible to keep up. While you could adopt the “good enough” policy that many businesses settle for, we think you should take a different approach—one that will make you impossible to compete with if carried out appropriately.