[LINK] British researcher finds a 'kill switch' for global cyber attack

[David Lochrin]

On Tuesday 16 May 2017 at 10:40 Jim Birch wrote:

>> it's difficult to see why any organisation would prefer Windows.
> 
> 1. Existing applications and infrastructure
> 2. Existing staff skills and available skills in new recruitments
> 3. System component interoperability
> 
> It's difficult to see how a moderate to large organisation that uses Windows could change.  It's a massive undertaking with a lot of costs and risks for some marginal paybacks.  This stranglehold is being eroded a little by client-server computing models but it is still extremely powerful.


Linux certainly isn't a drop-in replacement for Windows, but even successive versions of Windows can create problems.  And the way to introduce that sort of change in a big organisation is on a manageable department-by-department basis.

As for staff skills, I suspect most staff only have generic "computer skills" anyway; they're not highly trained in Windows.  They would easily find their way around a familiar Windows-like GUI such as KDE and packages like LibreOffice, and many (most?) applications these days employ a browser user interface.

David L.