I was in IT as well and know how an uneducated user can unintentionally infect an entire network. That is why you have backups and then backups to the backups. The problem with the CPU requirements for Windows 11 is that Microsoft are omitting two very important guidelines in determining the CPU requirements. People should not be focusing on TPM 2.0 or even secure boot. Both of these features have been around since 6th gen (or possibly even 5th gen) CPUs. The requirements that Microsoft are really focusing on to determine the final CPU cutoff point are HVCI and MBEC (both of which will be turned on for Windows 11). Of these two requirements MBEC is more important. When you turn on HVCI and MBEC on a 6th gen CPU or older, you can lose up to 50 percent of CPU and system performance, due to the fact that MBEC is emulated and not natively implemented. On some 7th gen CPUs, Skylake X HEDT CPUs, and 8th gen and above CPUs, MBEC is native to the CPU, so the performance hit should be much less if there is any at all. I am quite surprised that Microsoft has not come out and clearly stated this fact! I believe Microsoft will NOT back down from the final CPU requirements (they may possibly expand the CPU list to include some 7th gen and Skylake X HEDT CPUs due to their native implementation of MBEC, but that remains to be seen) as security should rightly so be at the forefront of the new OS. People may think that they can install Windows 11 on older CPUs with all the security features turned on and then turn them off after installation. But I think Microsoft will prevent that from happening if they implement a new Windows update model which only updates computers with all the security features turned on. Of course, people can still use Windows 10 until Oct 2025 (Personally, I believe Microsoft will probably add a year to that date) and that should be perfectly fine.
I was in IT as well and know how an uneducated user can unintentionally infect an entire network. That is why you have backups and then backups to the backups. The problem with the CPU requirements for Windows 11 is that Microsoft are omitting two very important guidelines in determining the CPU requirements. People should not be focusing on TPM 2.0 or even secure boot. Both of these features have been around since 6th gen (or possibly even 5th gen) CPUs. The requirements that Microsoft are really focusing on to determine the final CPU cutoff point are HVCI and MBEC (both of which will be turned on for Windows 11). Of these two requirements MBEC is more important. When you turn on HVCI and MBEC on a 6th gen CPU or older, you can lose up to 50 percent of CPU and system performance, due to the fact that MBEC is emulated and not natively implemented. On some 7th gen CPUs, Skylake X HEDT CPUs, and 8th gen and above CPUs, MBEC is native to the CPU, so the performance hit should be much less if there is any at all. I am quite surprised that Microsoft has not come out and clearly stated this fact! I believe Microsoft will NOT back down from the final CPU requirements (they may possibly expand the CPU list to include some 7th gen and Skylake X HEDT CPUs due to their native implementation of MBEC, but that remains to be seen) as security should rightly so be at the forefront of the new OS. People may think that they can install Windows 11 on older CPUs with all the security features turned on and then turn them off after installation. But I think Microsoft will prevent that from happening if they implement a new Windows update model which only updates computers with all the security features turned on. Of course, people can still use Windows 10 until Oct 2025 (Personally, I believe Microsoft will probably add a year to that date) and that should be perfectly fine.