Cybersecurity

News in brief: PCs’ PCs still running XP; bug-hunters cashing in; airport security stepped up

More than half of the computers in London’s Metropolitan Police force are still running on Windows XP, according to London’s mayor Sadiq Khan. That admission comes a year after the force had pledged to upgrade them to supported versions of Windows.

The mayor told Steve O’Connell of the London Assembly in a written response that a total of 18,293 of the force’s 32,751 desktops are on XP.

O’Connell said on Tuesday: “The Met is working towards upgrading its software, but in its current state it’s like a fish swimming in a pool of sharks.”

There’s increased concern about the number of PCs running out of date versions of Windows in the light of the WannaCry ransomware attack, which focused attention on the number of devices running the unsupported version of Microsoft’s operating system in the NHS and elsewhere.