As pre-IE11 support ends, scrambling for workarounds

Time flies. It seems like just yesterday we heard that Microsoft would stop supporting older versions of Internet Explorer. But it was over a year ago that it announced that support would end for all IE browser versions older than version 11. And the deadline is now upon us all: Jan. 16, 2016.

The main impact of this to security professionals is that Microsoft will stop providing security updates and technical support for all earlier versions of IE. (Microsoft describes this policy on an FAQ page.) This means that vulnerabilities will start accumulating in those older browsers, without fixes, so they will become increasingly dangerous to use as the months pass. By next March, I expect there to be several unfixable vulnerabilities with active exploits in the wild that will lead users of those older IE versions to certain compromise. So clearly, those versions no longer have a place in any professional organization.

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