India has urged Microsoft to offer a one-time special discount to Windows users in India so that they could upgrade to the latest Windows 10 OS for better protection in the wake of recent ransomware attacks.
Microsoft has sounded optimistic in its response and they have "in principle agreed" to the request, according to Reuters quoting National Cyber Security Advisor Gulshan Rai who spoke to the publication over the phone on Friday.
Microsoft officials at the company's headquarters in the US and Asia have declined to comment on this matter. It is understood that the company would be contemplating on this decision as such a move would prompt similar requests from other countries across the world.
Although the pricing discount on Windows 10 OS is still under discussion, the government is rooting for "less than a quarter of the current price."
To put it in other words, the government would like the discounted price to be around Rs. 1,000 or lower.
"It will be a one-time upgrade offer to Windows 10 and it will be a discounted price for the entire country," said Rai who has been appointed as the country's first cyber security chief by India's PM Narendra Modi.
"New OS versions have different architecture, much-improved architecture and much more resiliency," added Rai while explaining the advantages of migrating to the new Windows OS.
Windows 10 Home is currently being sold at Rs 7,999 in India, while the Pro version costs around Rs 14,999.
With an estimated 50 million Windows users in the country and only a small percentage of them running the latest Windows 10 OS, the government is too keen on protecting these computers from rampant cyber attacks.
Non-Windows 10 users are vulnerable to ransomware and other malware attacks across the country as the majority of them are still running the pirated versions of Windows, which do not receive any security patches from Microsoft servers.
Recently, one of the APM terminals at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) was hit by Petya ransomware, which severely disrupted operations of private port operator Pipavav.
India has also become the victim of WannaCry ransomware in the recent cyberattack that compromised systems in over 100 countries.
In light of the attacks, the government "wants to incentivise the common man to upgrade their systems," said Rai.
