Members of the Campus Community,

Twelve years after the release of the Windows XP operating system, Microsoft is ending all support for Windows XP on April 8, 2014.

After this date Microsoft will no longer provide security updates to Windows XP. Any computer running XP will have a significantly higher risk of being infected with a virus or other malware, potentially exposing personal information or being used to attack other computers and websites.

To protect University users and resources and comply with campus policy [1], the Office of Privacy and Information Assurance (OPIA) will begin blocking computers with Windows XP from the campus network after April 8, 2014. A blocked computer will not be able to access the Internet, internal campus sites, or other campus resources.

This means that if you use a computer running Windows XP on-campus, either through a wired or wireless connection, or connect to campus resources through a VPN after April 8, 2014, the computer will be blocked. If you are using a computer running Windows XP from off-campus it will continue to run, but you will be putting yourself, and any information stored on the computer, at risk. Because of this risk, you should not store any university data on a Windows XP machine, even if it is located off-campus.

For more information about Windows XP at the University of Illinois, please visit https://security.illinois.edu/content/windows-xp-retirement

[1] http://cam.illinois.edu/viii/VIII-1.2.htm