Windows 10 – Lifecycle change AGAIN!

Update 2018-09-07: Michael Niehaus was kind enough to supply some additional information on this subject. So to clarify this post and the information from MS. The currently available versions of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education will have 30 months of support and future releases starting with 1809 and 1903 will have 30 and 18 months of support.

Niehaus has also stated that Microsoft is still commited to deliver innovation and new features for every single Windows 10 release.

Orignial Post:

So its happend again, the lifecycle supportstatment surrounding Windows 10 has been changed. Some say for the better, but it remains to be seen. The change only applies to Enterprise and Education SKUs and only to the september relase of every year. So if you are on 1703 nothing has changed but if you are on 1607 or 1709 there has been some changes.

The new change is that Enterprise and Education now get 30months of support. There is also a small note to be made about a statment of the lifecycle facts page stating

“…you’ll need to install the latest feature update to help keep your device secure and have it remain supported by Microsoft.”

Which would mean that unless you apply the latest CU every month you are not really supported. How this will be “enforced” remains to be seen.

For more detailed information and source of the change review the lifecycle fact page from Microsoft here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet

One last thing to note, up until now Microsoft have only been testing upgrading the previous version to the lastest version of Windows 10, example when 1709 was released the only path that was tested was 1703->1709. With the new support statement you might have an urge to skip versions. However unless Microsoft changes their test protcoll and actually tests jumps like 1607->1709 it might still be worth going with every version, altho not as quickly as before.

Support dates as of 2018-09-06

/Peter

The Death Of MBAM

Update: 2018-10-06
Microsoft has given out information that MBAM is not been removed but instead put into sustained engieering. Meaning it will continue to work and continue to recive bug fixes but no new features will be added. This also means that support for future Windows 10 release as well as new SQL release should be added.

This should hold true until Microsoft has a feature by feature compareable service elsewhere (Azure most likley).

 

Microsoft Bitlocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) has now recieved its finaly date. This means that if you have already implemented MBAM you have a couple of years to migrate away from it, but if you haven’t implemented it and was about to do so. Please refrain from it.

Mainstream support will end July 7th 2019, meaning up until that date new “features” will be brought out to support newer SQL versions and the like.

Extended support will end on July 7th 2024, meaning after this date there will be no security patches and no support at all available.

Hopefully Microsoft gives a solution to rotating keys and self-service through Active Directory or Azure Active directory soon to fill the gap between MBAM and a standarnd Bitlocker implementation.

/Peter