Malwarebytes’ report also shed light on how trojan-turned-botnets Emotet and TrickBot both made a return last year to target organizations alongside new ransomware families including Ryuk, Sodinokibi and Phobos.

Additionally, a new wave of hack tools and registry key disablers made their way into the firm’s top detections. Consumer detections of HackTools were up by 42 percent and Malwarebytes believe this is a threat to watch closely in 2020 alongside MimiKatz which also targets businesses.

Adware remained problematic for consumers and businesses on Windows, Mac and Android devices as it proved extremely difficult to uninstall while deploying aggressive techniques to serve up advertisements, hijack browsers and redirect web traffic.

CEO of Malwarebytes, Marcin Klecynski provided further insight on the findings of the firm’s latest report in a press release, saying:

“A rise in pre-installed malware, adware and multi-vector attacks signals that threat actors are becoming more creative and increasingly persistent with their campaigns. It is imperative that, as an industry, we continue to raise the bar in defending against these sophisticated attacks, actively protecting both users and businesses by flagging and blocking all programs that may violate their privacy, infect their devices, or even turn the infrastructure they depend on against them.”

Despite Microsoft’s official support ending, this doesn’t mean Windows 7 will stop working after January 14 2020 – as you’ll still be able to use Windows 7 for as long as you want.

But it does bring in a number of new issues, mainly that Windows 7 won’t be patched to protect from any new viruses or security threats going forward, meaning your business could be left vulnerable to any new or emerging issues.

And as we’ve noted previously, if a large number of people continue to use Windows 7 after the End of Life date, that could actually prove to be a big incentive for malicious users to target viruses at Windows 7.

So, while Windows 7 will continue to work after January 14 2020, your workplace should start planning to upgrade to Windows 10, or an alternative operating system, as soon as possible.

With this in mind, if your business is still using Windows 7, probably the best option to consider is to upgrade to a newer operating system.

There are a number of options on the market today, both in terms of newer versions of Windows, or other providers, but if you want to keep it simple, the best thing is to upgrade to Windows 10.

This is the best option for a number of reasons – primarily in that both operating systems are made by Microsoft, so the upgrade process is relatively easy, especially if you are updating a large number of office or workplace devices in bulk.

Staying with Windows also means there should be less disruption for your employees, with most popular Windows 7 programs have been  updated to work on Windows 10. The two operating systems also have several similarities when it comes to layout and interface, and in many cases you can keep your files on your PC.

However you need to remember that until you are upgraded to the new version, your devices will be vulnerable to threats looking to exploit any unsupported security flaws lurking in Windows 7.

If you want to upgrade to Windows 10, then you’ll need to contact Microsoft, who can examine your current subscription level and then take the process further.

That can either be with Microsoft itself, or one of its certified partners – so if you’re looking to go it alone, it might be worth getting several quotes for the process.

It’s worth considering that as your software improves, your hardware will need to do so too, as Windows 10 may struggle to work well on your old Windows 7 machine.

Here are the recommended specs Microsoft suggests for Windows 10:

• Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC
• RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit
• Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS
• Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver
• Display: 800 x 600 resolution