Windows 10 migration makes security harder for Enterprises

Remember Adaptiva? The firm that does Windows 10 migrations, and which was talking about how everybody was migrating to Windows 10? It turned out to be not so much the case, of course, for a variety of reasons, but Adaptiva themselves seemed to still be pretty bullish on the Windows 10 migrations that they're in the business of facilitating.

Or they were, until about five minutes ago, according to Business Wire:

Adaptiva, the market leader in smart scaling systems management, today announced the results of its 2017 Enterprise Endpoint Security Survey, which indicates that companies are experiencing significant challenges in their attempts to keep their endpoints secure. Maintaining Windows 10 security topped the list of challenges with over half of respondents indicating it can take a month or more for IT teams to execute Windows OS updates, which ultimately leaves systems vulnerable.

The survey revealed that most companies are unable to maintain endpoint security with consistency for a number of reasons, such as:

• The pace and volume of new Windows OS security fixes.
• The complexity associated with tracking what updates need to be applied to which endpoints from thousands of third-party software vendors.
• The difficulties caused by rapidly changing security policies.
• The limitations of resources in terms of available staff and their respective skill sets.

“Breaches are occurring unnecessarily, teams are overwhelmed, and it’s been nearly impossible for enterprises to keep up with changes in security policies,” said Jim Souders, chief executive officer at Adaptiva. “With the Windows 10 migration, the situation becomes even more serious. If companies can’t find ways to successfully automate security for Windows 10 and other third-party applications, they’re putting their systems at risk.”

Wow. It sounds like Adaptiva's having trouble actually migrating businesses to Windows 10. Which sucks for them, since they're in the business of migrating businesses to Windows 10. 

It does go a long way to explaining why Windows 10 migration has stalled, though. I mean, if you had a business, and Windows 10 migration was this much of a mess, would you switch? Or, as Wayne Williams puts it, at betanews:

When Windows 10 was still (officially) free, and Microsoft was forcing it onto systems against user wishes, the operating system’s market share growth was impressive. In no time at all it shot past Windows XP and Windows 8.x.

But since then, the new OS has plateaued. NetMarketShare’s usage share figures show that Windows 10 grew by a mere 5 percent from July 2016 to July 2017, and in August it posted an increase of just 0.36 percentage points. Microsoft, for its part, claimed back in December that Windows 10 was more popular than Windows 7, but of course it isn’t. Not even close.

Microsoft’s own Windows and Store Trends page was a good place to see how Windows 10 was doing in terms of market share, even if the figures were more than a little iffy. However, after February’s update showed Windows 10 to be losing market share, Microsoft stopped updating the page.

Once again, we're sitting at the mid-month mark, and I'm going to go out on the limb again with my OS Market Share prediction for month end: I hereby predict that Windows 10 will still be flat at 27%, Windows 7 will still own over 48% of the market, and Windows 10's share of the Steam customer base will have contracted again as gamers flee the bug-ridden mess of the Creators Update.