Security with Office 2003
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 2:29 pm
I'm still running office 2003. What's my security concerns?
The only thing that has changed recently is that security fixes will no longer be made for Office 2003. That means that if anyone finds a bug in Office that they can use to infect your PC, that bug will probably never be fixed.
However, to do that, they still need to successfully attack you. This will typically happen if you open an infected document using one of the Office 2003 programs. If you don't open documents that were created or modified by other people, you can't be attacked; and if you only open documents from trustworthy sources (people you know, and who you were expecting to be sending you documents) it's extremely unlikely that you will be attacked.
Upgrading will make attacks less likely to succeed, but if you are cautious enough to avoid getting attacked, you can still stay safe if you don't upgrade. Being cautious is good practice anyway, because it's sometimes still possible to be infected even with a fully patched copy of the newest version of a software product.