Workstations with up-to-date operating systems receive the latest security patches, which provide protection against viruses and malware that can cause account and system-wide compromises. They are more secure and perform better in our computing environment. UConn requires that university devices that are directly connected to our network must run fully supported software. After discovering that some managed workstations were missing critical patches, we implemented an updated patching process last year that enforced installation when they next connected to the UConn network.
The latest version of Microsoft Windows is version 11. While the previous version is still supported and will continue to receive security patches for a couple of years, it will not receive all feature updates and fixes that improve use. Further, there are some additional complexities with Windows 10 and the Microsoft Intune device management framework that is the foundation of our workstation management program. There are substantive benefits to using the most up-to-date version of Windows.
Next week, ITS will begin contacting individuals with eligible managed devices that do not have Windows 11 installed to start the upgrade process. We will leverage our updated patching process and follow an approach that will be very similar to how we migrated devices to Windows 10.