When you think of expiration dates, you think of food, not necessarily hardware and software. But hardware and software expire too! Just like expired food can make you sick, expired hardware and software can do the same to your infrastructure. When we talk about expired hardware/software, we refer to it as End of Life (EoL) or End of Service (EoS).

What is EoL?

EoL means the manufacturer or software creator will no longer provide patches, updates, or support. Long before this occurs, the company has already been working on and providing a better technology that replaces the previous versions. Businesses should be planning to replace hardware/software before it reaches its EoL.

Will it Stop Working?

Just because something reaching its end of life, does not mean it will stop working. It will continue to operate, but with severe vulnerabilities. You may also find that you will start to experience compatibility issues with other systems that are current. Often, performance is impacted by outdated systems, which can slow your productivity. The worst part is at any moment your data could be exposed or corrupted without warning, with no fix in sight.

What is the Risk?

While the products may still operate, it becomes a huge vulnerability. The reason being, there are no updates or patches on these products, even though the security holes exist. Even worse, when patches and updates on newer version are available, it gives hackers a guide on how to exploit these unpatched versions. It becomes an easy target and could be catastrophic to recover from, since there will be no support…not even paid support from the vendors.

You can experience performance issues affecting your productivity. If you have regulatory compliance, you will be noncompliant if running any EoL systems which could potentially cost you in fines.

What to do?

The cost to recover from failed or exploited EoL systems is much greater than planned upgrades. So, the best thing to do is be preventive and plan for upgrades before EoL. If it’s too late for that, read: What to do when hardware/software expire.