Over the last few years I have had the opportunity to speak witha number of credit union executives and information technologypeople about their aging IT infrastructure and their unwillingnessor lack of priority to develop a comprehensive tech refresh programto ensure they are matching life-cycles on equipment balancedagainst risk of failure.

Unfortunately, too many credit unions today are holding offupgrading their equipment well beyond what industry experts woulddeem reasonable. Examples include running servers well beyonda five-year life cycle, keeping old operating systems installed onaging PCs, and even worse, failing to keep their core applicationsoftware and other key programs up to date or patched.

I find this at odds with the fact that some credit unions assignlife cycles to documents, programs and even employees but will notwith respect to something as critical as their ITinfrastructure.