Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will be installed on 4 million PCs used by the U.S. Department of Defense. Now the Pentagon's CIO Terry Halvorsen says that he would like to see DOD employees use Windows 10 when they are home as well.
In a chat with Fedscoop, Halvorsen stated that Windows 10's better security features, combined with Microsoft's use of its Azure cloud platform, was the reason for his recommendation:
DOD has never before had "an operating system that had this much security baked in from the beginning," he said. "If you're using a computer at home and you're not on Windows 10, you're doing yourself an injustice — you ought to be moving to Windows 10." Halvorsen plans to issue similar guidance to DOD employees for using Windows 10 at home on their personal workstations, stopping just short of officially endorsing the operating system."We're going to put out some guidance to our employees in general — it's not an endorsement of Windows 10 or Microsoft specifically — listing what the characteristics of Windows 10 would give you if you put it in your home system," he said. "That's as close to an endorsement as I can get for a software product."
Microsoft previously said that the DOD plans to upgrade those 4 million PCs to Windows 10 by the end of January 2017. Halvorsen says that goal will be achieved:
"[Army CIO Robert] Ferrell and I are in 100 percent agreement, as are the leadership of the Army and the [DOD] secretary, that our role remains to get Windows 10 in a year," Halvorsen said. "Are there challenges with that goal? Absolutely. Will we make that goal? I think we're going to come awfully close to making that goal."
