VietNamNet Bridge – For a variety of reasons, many Vietnamese computer users, both institutional and individual, have not taken any action to protect their computers from security holes since April 8, when Microsoft ended its support for the Windows XP operating system.

Government agencies have been fully aware of the risk they are facing with Microsoft’s ending its support of Windows XP, but they don’t know what to do. They are just waiting for instructions from higher-ups.

And Vietnamese individuals don’t care about this because they “have the habit” of using unlicensed software.

“I only play free games and use a cracked operating system. I have no important data on computers, because I have saved all the most important documents on the cloud and on USB. If my computer gets infected with a virus, all I’ll have to do is ghost it,” a member of an information technology (IT) forum wrote.

Ghosting is the process of restoring a computer to a previous state – such as one that existed before the computer became infected with malware.

“I don’t care about the death of Windows XP. Others don’t care, either. So, there is no need for Microsoft to worry about how Vietnamese continue living in the post-Windows XP period,” another wrote.

Microsoft has promised in the mass media that it will support businesses to switch to other operating systems. However, according to the Dien Dan Dau Tu online newspaper, the software giant has seemingly abandoned Vietnamese computer users.

To date, the Computerization Agency, an arm of the Ministry of Information and Communication, still has not received any notices or support from Microsoft. The same situation is being faced by the majority of businesses operating in Vietnam.

An office worker said he reads newspapers every day to seek news about support for Vietnamese computer users, or solutions the government has decided to apply to adapt to the new reality. However, he cannot find anything new, other than the advice that, in case Microsoft continues to “forget” Vietnamese users, they should upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8 for their computers.

Windows 7 has proven to be preferable in Vietnam because of its more familiar interface and operation principles than Windows 8, with a design optimized for touch screens – the ones typically found on smartphones and tablets.

The office worker said the government has not released any announcements about how state agencies should continue working.

Meanwhile, Webwereld.nl has reported that Microsoft will receive millions of Euros from the Dutch government in return for the software corporation’s continued support of computers at the country’s government agencies which still use Windows XP.

Under an agreement signed by both sides, Microsoft will continue its Windows XP support for 34,000-40,000 computers in the Netherlands from now until January 2015, during which Microsoft will upgrade the government computers with Windows 7 or Windows 8.

According to Ngo Tuan Anh, Vice President of BKAV, a well-known Internet security solution provider, Vietnam incurs the loss of VND8 trillion every year from attacks over the Internet.

Anh thinks that businesses need to allocate at least 5-10 percent of IT projects’ budgets for network security, or they will have to waste much more money if their systems are hacked.

T. Mai