Imagine this scenario: You’re just hours away from finalising a huge partnership that could put your company on the map. The boardroom is buzzing with excitement, and everyone is eager to celebrate a new era of growth. But behind the scenes, the systems that have kept your business running for years—those old, familiar platforms that once worked just fine—quietly leave the door open for cybercriminals.
This isn’t an empty “what if.” Consider a recent alert from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA): attackers are abusing a legacy Cisco Smart Install (SMI) feature to break into outdated network devices. Some of these devices have reached end-of-life, so no security fixes are coming. Headlines like these remind us that outdated systems are ticking time bombs. The question is, what can you do to stop the countdown before it’s too late?
Today’s cyber threats are light-years ahead of what most legacy systems were designed to handle. It’s like sending a decades-old car onto a modern racetrack—it just can’t keep up. Attackers know this. They look for weak spots in old operating systems, outdated encryption, and software that hasn’t seen a patch since your last office holiday party. Even standard security measures we now take for granted, like multi-factor authentication, may be missing on these older platforms.
On top of that, regulations have grown stricter over the years. Laws like GDPR or PCI DSS require stronger protections, and legacy systems often fail to meet these standards. That can mean hefty fines, legal trouble, and a serious dent in your reputation if auditors come knocking and find glaring gaps.
