The United States Department of Defense (DoD) plans to upgrade 4 million workstations to Windows 10, generating strong support for Microsoft's newest operating system.
To boost its overall security, the DoD wants all its PCs that still run on older versions to adopt the latest Windows OS until February 2017. Microsoft integrated a vast array of features and services in Windows 10 aimed at increasing enterprise security, and the DoD's announcement shows that the company's efforts reached their purpose.
The 4 million upgrades mark the largest deployment of the OS in an enterprise environment, yet.
The decision aims to streamline the IT infrastructure of the department, so that all potential cyberthreat can be dealt with easier and faster.
The American government seems to put a lot of faith in Windows 10, and it could send a powerful message of trust to other private or administrative organizations. There are no specific details on the total cost of the upgrade, but it is known that the Department of Defense has a yearly spending of $38 billion for IT and cybersecurity.
What is more, the line of Microsoft Surface tablets was updated to meet the standards of security and interoperability of the DoD. This means that government employees can now do their work on mobile devices, without sacrificing safety for mobility.
It should be noted that the DoD is the biggest employer in the United States and one of the largest global organizations. It also sports data breach vulnerability, which forces it to be a late adopter of new technologies.
This time, though, Defense Secretary Ash Carter insisted that all U.S. DoD agencies are speeding up Windows 10 implementation.
Terry Halvorsen, chief information officer of the department, puts emphasis on cybersecurity and there is a big chance that he will deploying Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise Edition, which is better equipped, security-wise, than the standard edition.
"If you have an impending need to survive you will innovate," Halvorsen says.
As security is an essential concern for both the State Department and the DoD, the Credential Guard of Windows 10 was a game changer. It is a feature in the newest Microsoft OS that uses safeguards to protect user data from tampering via secure containers.
Simply put, even if your Windows 10 PC has malware in its system, your credential data is still safe. The DoD affirms that the feature was enough reason for the organization to choose Windows 10. Secure Boot, Windows Defender and Enterprise Data Protection are other notable features that make Windows 10 the go-to choice for stable and easy to maintain security.
Microsoft has set an ambitious goal of having 1 billion devices running Windows 10 by the third quarter of 2018, and DoD's installment surely helps in hitting that number. In spite of being live for less than a year, Windows 10 already has 200 million users. The company points out that a whopping 76 percent of its education and enterprise customers are using Windows 10.
The speed at which the Department of Defense adopts Windows 10 says a lot about its capabilities as an enterprise-ready system, prepared to cater to civilian institutions from healthcare, retail and financial areas.
