Microsoft revealed the results of a startling study of the banking sector in India today. Conducted by Ascentius 
Amongst the greatest risks facing banks that maintain their Windows XP installations, despite the end of support, are their ability to respond to customers and manage waiting times. More specifically:
A large number of branches that rely on XP, especially in the rural and semi-urban areas may go down and therefore deny service to customers completely
In metro and urban branches, the impact may be as great as 55% of customers facing an extended waiting time of up to 30 minutes for an average transaction
The fiscal impact of this could be as much as loss of business opportunity worth Rs. 1,100 crore in a day and a loss of income of Rs. 330 crore over a period of 3 days (assuming that a major incident may take 3 days for the systems to come up to normal functioning)
Non-migration may also expose customers to greater risk of identity theft and fraud
Further, as per Ascentius Consulting, staying on Windows XP could also mean that:
Banks may face loss of business opportunities because:
They will not be able to leverage eKYC (electronic Know Your Customer) norms, as proposed by the RBI
Since Windows XP may not support new biometric devices, as required by RBI-UID norms, banks will be constrained to continue with manual verification of customers leading of higher costs and longer customer waiting times
Rural bank branches are expected to set up biometric readers and software to pass of benefits of government schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Branches staying on Windows XP may not be able to deploy such government schemes
Besides, there are several IT risks that will require extensive effort to manage. In light of these, CERT-IN has also come out with an advisory recommending immediate migration.
The 100-working days timeline is crucial for banks as per Ascentius Consulting. This is because their study estimates the time to move from XP to modern technology for banks will be between 4-6 months.
“We have been advising our customers to move off Windows XP for a long time now. There are a significant number of PCs out there that still need to be moved per a plan. The move to a modern OS like Windows 8.1 will not only alleviate the risks for users and businesses but will also open up opportunities posed by modern technology, like the cloud, for them”, said Amrish Goyal, General Manager, Windows Business Group, Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt. Ltd.
“A large part of our PC base was on Windows XP and, as the product is reaching end-of-support, we are in the middle of a phased migration to more recent versions of Windows, including Windows 7 and Windows 8. We’ve already seen that employees have been able to enjoy a lot more features like 64 bit computing with better functionality and benefits. This upgrade also brings value to our internal customers and employees by helping them transition seamlessly and enhance their present work processes,” said Jayantha Prabhu, Chief Technology Officer, Essar Group.
“By migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 we have overcome the challenge of compatibility with modern hardware, software and applications. Security features like bit locker and encryption provide us with better peace of mind while working with sensitive data. The biggest benefit has been that cloud-enabled Microsoft Office 365 is compatible with Windows 7,” said Milind N Kotibhaskar, General Manager, and Division Head, Infotech Division, Toyo Engineering India Ltd.
Some other recent studies are also advising users to move to modern technology:
According to a study conducted by the research firm IDC in India, companies are prone to spend three times more if they do not put a planned migration strategy in place from the outset. Estimates suggests that the cost of upgrading (assuming no enterprise license agreement and three-year amortization period) will be US$ 95 vis-à-vis the cost of non-migration at US$ 300 per seat/user followed by almost double the cost in the subsequent year, should they choose to opt for a custom support contract to stay on Windows XP post April 2014.
According to the most recent Security Intelligence Report by Microsoft, Windows XP users are 6 times more likely to be infected than users of modern operating systems, like Windows 8.1, despite encountering the same amount of threats. Windows XP users are also 21 times more vulnerable.
Source : Archaa Chopra