Published on 04/ 4/2005
A study by AssetMetrix Research Labs shows that only 24% of North American companies using Windows XP have deployed the Service Pack 2 since it was released last year to fix critical security flaws.
"The popularity of Windows XP SP2 tends to decrease slightly as company size increases," according to the study. But overall "more companies are tending to hold back on SP2 than accept it," AssetMetrix said. It is not surprising that larger companies tend to hesitate before applying patches to a large number of machines. Such operating system fixes also have the potential of creating undesirable effects and create issues.
I think that not patching the system is a greater risk than doing so. I the last year, several attacks from viruses or worms (a particular kind of virus) could have been avoided if Windows XP machines had been updated.
Microsoft has given companies until April 12th to test Windows XP SP2. Beyond this date, updates will be applied automatically whether the user wants it or not.
Windows XP SP2