India is pressing Microsoft Corp to offer a sharply discounted one-time deal to the more than 50 million Windows users in the country so that they can upgrade to the latest Windows 10 operating system in the wake of ransomware attacks.
Microsoft officials in India have "in principle agreed" to the request, Gulshan Rai, India's cyber security coordinator, told Reuters over the phone on Friday.
If Microsoft agrees to such a discount, it could open up the global software giant to similar requests from around the world. India began talks with Microsoft after the WannaCry ransomware attack last month, noting that both WannaCry and this week's attack, dubbed by some cyber experts as "NotPetya", exploited vulnerabilities in older iterations of the Windows OS.
It will be a one-time upgrade offer to Windows 10 and it will be a discounted price for the entire country. Roughly 96 percent of an estimated 57 million computers in India currently run on Windows.
The government has also worked with banks to ensure that some 200,000 of the more than 240,000 ATMs in the country, most of which run on older Windows XP systems, have been upgraded with security patches released by Microsoft following the WannaCry attack, Rai said.
Windows 10 Home currently retails for 7,999 rupees ($124) in India, while the Pro version of the software typically used by large companies and institutions costs 14,999 rupees ($232).
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)