That has included an emphasis on urging businesses to shift to the cloud from on-premises infrastructure.

The past year, in particular, has seen Microsoft get far more vocal and aggressive around the need for increasing security. The rise of ransomware attacks, the Spectre and Meltdown side-channel vulnerabilities and the massive SolarWinds hack have all ensnared Microsoft and its platforms in numerous ways. While it’s true that Microsoft is increasing the hardware requirements substantially for Windows 11-much more so than the company did for Windows 10-a lot has changed for Microsoft around security since Windows 10 debuted in 2015. What follows are five key things to know about Microsoft’s Windows 11 security strategy. That suggests that the original announcement from Microsoft that Windows 11 would be available this holiday only applies to new devices. Microsoft has said that the upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 won’t be offered until 2022. However, Microsoft did say in its blog post Monday that it plans to evaluate whether to allow certain PCs running seventh-gen Intel processors or AMD Zen 1 chips into the Windows 11 fold. That suggests that a significant number of PCs will not be able to install Windows 11. Intel announced its eighth-gen Coffee Lake processors in August 2017, while AMD’s Zen 2 architecture debuted with third-gen Ryzen chips (Ryzen 3000 series) in July 2019. The company has said that its hardware requirements for upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11 will include having a processor from Intel’s eighth generation (Coffee Lake) or newer, or from AMD’s Zen 2 series and up.

This is what drives our decisions,” Microsoft said in the blog post. “With Windows 11, we are focused on increasing security, improving reliability, and ensuring compatibility. On Monday, Microsoft published a blog post that listed security first among the guiding principles for the Windows 11 operating system, which will be the successor to Windows 10 when it launches later this year. One thing is becoming clear about Microsoft’s strict requirements on CPU compatibility for Windows 11: it’s all about security.

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