Do firms delay upgrading because of security fears?

The furore surrounding Microsoft's Black Screen of Death may finally be dying down, but it has raised more serious concerns about the integrity of new operating systems and whether firms are deliberately delaying upgrades to avoid becoming a bigger target for hackers.

That is, at least, according to security giant Symantec, which has commissioned a new survey into the upgrade habits of enterprise customers, either with alarming speed or uncanny foresight.

The vendor interviewed nearly 1,500 IT managers in UK, France, Germany and Italy and found that just over a third had major concerns over hackers targeting newer desktop software to find vulnerabilities.

A quarter said they would hold off on upgrading for at least another 12 months, while two-thirds said negative press coverage played a role in influencing their decisions to upgrade.

Which is all very well, but are IT decision makers really that easily swayed by so-called 'negative press coverage'? The letters and comments we get here at V3 would seem to suggest not.

Surely the level-headed IT manager would be wise enough to realise that any new operating system or desktop software is likely to receive an unduly large amount of media scrutiny, including how safe or otherwise it is.

We all know that bigger security risks lie with systems remaining unpatched against known flaws, whether those systems are fresh from the factory or not.