Microsoft has announced that it'll end support for older versions of Internet Explorer beginning next week. Here's everything you need to know in the event you're running a legacy version of Microsoft's web browser.

From January 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system will continue to receive security updates and technical support. Internet Explorer 11 is the latest version of Microsoft's browser for Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 and thus, will be the only version to continue to receive support.

In other words, if you're using Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9 or Internet Explorer 10, it's time to move on to something a bit more modern.

The only exception is Windows Vista users as Internet Explorer 9 is the most recent supported version of the browser. As PCWorld highlights, Vista will reach the end of its extended support phase in April 2017 at which time it'll join Windows XP on the unsupported list.

The news shouldn't come as a surprise as Microsoft first noted the pending changes in August of 2014.

Microsoft will issue an "end of life" upgrade notification as part of its January 12 cumulative security update that'll urge users to update their browser. Those that insist on sticking with their old version can modify a specific registry key to disable the upgrade notification. Instructions on how to do that can be found over on Microsoft's support site.

Illustration courtesy Gwen Sung, CNN Money