Prepare Your Organization for Adobe Flash's End of Life

MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. — Dec. 9, 2020 — FORTÉ advises its clients and partners to take all necessary preparations before the retirement of Adobe Flash Player later this month. Starting Dec. 31, 2020, Adobe will cease support of Adobe Flash Player and block content from running in Flash on Jan. 12, 2021.

Adobe Flash continues to prove less viable as alternative options emerged, including open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly. Since most major browsers today include these standards, Adobe Flash usage declined up to 80% for some browsers from 2014 to 2017.

Microsoft Edge is among the browsers that will stop support of Flash. In September 2020, Microsoft announced its plans to phase out Flash from its browsers and Windows operating systems. For customers, this means Microsoft will not push security updates for the platform. To protect their machines and systems, Adobe said in a statement that all customers should uninstall Flash.

"The reality is that this will affect everyone because it's highly likely some software or hardware within the organization still relies on Flash," said Sean Hoyle, Control Systems Programmer at FORTÉ.

Adobe announced the end of life (EOL) for Flash in July 2017, with hopes that it would give developers and others sufficient time to build or find replacements for Flash.

For those who have not taken the necessary precautions to phase out Adobe Flash or need help with the transition, FORTÉ asks that you reach out to your account manager for a consultation to determine a suitable alternative ahead of the EOL date.

"There will come a time when people hit a security wall, forcing them to update — only they won't be able to," said Paul Mueller, Manager of Central Engineering at FORTÉ. "It's important for organizations to take the necessary steps to phase out Adobe Flash now before it's too late."

Want to find out if Flash is running? Click this link to prompt a dialog from your browser: https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/about/. If it's running, disable it and then test interfacing with systems to see if functionality has been lost.