lehnerus2000 said:

Why would businesses swap to a new OS, when many of them have only recently swapped to W7?

I suspect they are not planning to upgrade for many years (just like XP).

Home Depot confirms security breach following Target data theft | Reuters

Reasons like this for example. This story I know kind of personally as I know someone who is a store manager of a Home Depot in my area and she's told me a while ago they just recently switched off from Windows xp to 7 on the registers this past spring. And also, a customer was found out to have had their account be part of the stolen credit/debit card numbers in this breach in that same store. Kind of scary. Also scary is the fact I could possibly be a victim of this...

Windows xp's as well as 7's security are pale in comparison to Windows 8. I honestly don't think Home Depot even USES anti-virus software at all, hence why something like this could have easily happened. Get past one firewall, all bets are off. Windows 8 and soon to be 9 have at least SOME base line anti-malware protection through Defender. It makes you wonder if those data systems, from registers to servers to PC terminals, were all running Windows 8 or at least a security software; a breach wouldn't have happened. But obviously security software usually costs money to evaluate, test, configure, and deploy so that probably could have been a reason why NOT to do so when there aren't any problems in doing so theoretically. If it were built into the operating system from the start, it would have to be used and deployed because doing so it not only lazy and arrogant, it's damn right irresponsible. Now the company is having to deal with trying to figure out how possibly large their data breach is because they probably didn't have such redundant safeguards in place and put at risk millions of peoples' debit and credit card information, including me.