1. It’s an easy hacker target for compromise due to missing/unavailable security fixes.
2. Older hardware is highly prone to catastrophic failure (power supplies, hard disks, etc.).
3. Longer downtime during recovery efforts because HW/SW cannot be found or bought (original media lost).
4. Compliance and audit failures if audited.
5. Lost of brand/reputation made worse by extended down-time or inability to recover critical data.
6. Accumulation of technical debt makes future changes and upgrades much more difficult and longer to do (if it’s even possible).
7. Inferior performance and hardware reliability.
8. Incompatible software you may wish/need to run.
9. Support is unavailable for troubleshooting.
10. Prevents digital transformation: Cloud-enabled services cannot be used. For example: old on premises servers cannot talk to cloud services.
11. Staff frustration from a lack of investment in their productivity and support.
Become more aware. Become more secure.