If your organization is still clinging to Windows XP, notably Service Pack 2, the clock is ticking.

As of July 13, Microsoft will pull the plug on support for XP SP2, meaning no more security updates, hotfixes, or customer service.

According to new research from IT-services vendor Softchoice, four out of five organizations are at risk of security breaches if they don't upgrade to SP3. (My advice: Do the smart thing and move right to Windows 7.)

Here's an excerpt from the CIO story about Softchoice's data:

The Softchoice report is based on an analysis of 278,498 corporate and public sector PCs across 117 organizations from industries such as financial, healthcare, manufacturing and education.

Softchoice's data shows that 46 percent of these PCs are still running Microsoft Windows XP SP2. In addition, it is estimated that 77 percent of these organizations have enough SP2 in their environments to warrant immediate updates.

So nearly half of the companies still running XP haven't upgraded to SP3? Sheesh! These are probably the same outfits forcing their users to run Internet Explorer 6 (another security disaster in the making).

Is there any justifiable reason to still be using SP2 at this point? If so, I'm all ears--spill it in the comments.