NICS Ltd.

Six posts deep into a series about everything that goes wrong with Windows 10 after end-of-support. Time to flip it and talk about what actually goes right when you upgrade.

Windows 11 isn't just safer. It's nicer to use.

Things you'll actually notice on day one:

-> Faster wake from sleep. Open the laptop, start working. Less time staring at a black screen.
-> Better video calls. Background blur, eye contact correction, and noise removal built right into the operating system. No extra software.
-> Snap layouts. Pull a window to the corner and a little menu appears showing you exactly how to arrange your other windows. Sounds small. Saves real minutes every day.
-> A cleaner Start menu that doesn't look like it was designed by a committee.
-> Better battery life on laptops in most cases.

Things you won't notice but matter:

-> TPM 2.0 hardware-level security built in.
-> Modern protections that make it much harder for malware to gain admin rights.
-> Actual ongoing security patches from Microsoft. The thing Windows 10 stopped getting six months ago.
-> Better performance on the same hardware in many cases. The OS uses memory and CPU more efficiently.

The Saskatchewan reality: if your business has computers from the last 4-5 years, most of them probably qualify for the upgrade for free. The ones that don't were going to need replacing in the next year or two anyway. Nothing here is wasted budget.

The real choice isn't "upgrade or stay on Windows 10."

The real choice is "upgrade on a Tuesday morning, at your own pace, with coffee in hand, while your team works around you" OR "upgrade at 2 AM after a ransomware attack has shut everything down."

Same upgrade. Different price. The Tuesday morning version costs less in money, time, and dignity. 💻

Final post in the series next week: the 30-day plan to get every Windows 10 machine off your network. Save this post if you'd find that useful.

What's actually holding you back from upgrading? Honest answers welcome.

79 stores. Closed for a week. No prescriptions. No retail. Nothing.

That's what a single ransomware attack did to London Drugs in 2024.

If you live anywhere in Western Canada, you probably noticed. Or you couldn't fill a prescription. Or you couldn't pick up the camera battery you needed for the wedding on Saturday.

The attackers wanted $25 million. London Drugs said no.

Good for them.

The cost of saying no was still enormous:

-> Every store dark for over a week
-> Employee data stolen and threatened with public release
-> System rebuilds that ran for months
-> Reputation damage that lingered into 2025 reporting
-> Sales nobody got back

Now think about what one week of being completely offline does to a small business. A 5-person shop in Saskatoon. A 17-person engineering office. A medical clinic in Prince Albert.

Most small businesses can't survive that.

The numbers say roughly 1 in 5 close within six months of a major attack. Many more limp along for two years and then quietly fold. Customers find someone else. Vendors get nervous. Insurance gets expensive. The math just stops working.

The London Drugs attack started the way most do. Someone clicked something. Or a system wasn't fully patched. Or a credential was reused.

Boring causes. Catastrophic results.

Here's the question I want you to actually answer, even if just to yourself:

If your business went completely offline for 7 straight days starting tomorrow morning, how would you make payroll?

If you don't have a clear answer to that, that's the conversation you and your IT person should be having this week.

This is post 4 of a series on the real risks of running Windows 10 after end-of-support. More soon. 🔐

58 gigabytes.

That's how much data the Akira ransomware group claims they took from Ardene back in January 2025.

If you've shopped at Ardene anywhere in Canada, that's a name you know. Hundreds of stores across the country. A real Canadian success story.

Then someone got in.

Customer information. Financial records. Employee personal details. Gone.

The fallout: stores running on disrupted systems, shipping delays customers noticed and remembered, customer service backlogs, thousands of letters going out to notify people their data was stolen, and recovery costs that don't show up in any press release.

The actual attack? Almost certainly started with something boring. A phishing email. A reused password. Some unpatched system somewhere in the chain.

Ardene has resources. Real IT staff. Security tools and the budget to use them. They still got hit.

Now imagine the same playbook applied to a 17-person engineering firm in Saskatoon. A construction company in PA. A medical clinic in Regina. A law office on 8th Street.

That's the gap. The attacks that hit big companies in 2025 use the same techniques that work on small Saskatchewan businesses today. The only meaningful difference is press coverage.

Honest question for the comments: if a 58 GB data theft hit your business tomorrow, would you know what was actually in those 58 GB?

That's what most owners can't answer. And that's the problem.

Six months ago, Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows 10.

A lot of Saskatchewan businesses kept right on using it. Some didn't get the memo. Some shrugged. Both groups are running on borrowed time.

I'm running a 8-part series breaking down what actually happens when attackers find an unsupported Windows 10 machine on a small business network. No jargon. Just real Canadian stories and the steps any owner can take.

If you've still got even one Windows 10 PC at the office, follow along.

Honest question to start: are you still on Windows 10 anywhere, or have you fully moved on?