How safe will it be to continue running Windows 7 under Parallels?

[SWANDY]

I am currently running Windows 7 Home under Parallels 14 (on an iMac running Mojave 10.14.3) and would prefer not to upgrade to Windows 10 because I am running two older programs (Microsoft Links Golf and IBM Lotus Approach) that run perfectly. The last time I ran Windows 10 (under Bootcamp), Lotus Approach ran fine, but MS Links Golf had major graphical issues to the point it was unplayable. Those are the only two programs I currently use Windows 7 for.
My question is how safe - after MS stops support for Windows 7 next year - will it be to continue to run Windows 7 under Parallels? And/or what should I do/install to keep it as safe as possible (aside from making backups)? I use Advast Antivirus in both Mojave and Windows 7.
Thanks.

 

[RogerH6]

No reason not to.
I've still got XP running as a VM.
However you need to ensure the VM is not 'exposed' to the outside world, since it will have security issues. Hopefully
you don't use the machine to do anything on the Internet?. If so, set the network to 'host only', and only access
external stuff from the Mac OS, not the VM. This way it becomes able only to access stuff inside the host computer,
and not the rest of the world, but because of this _provided the host computer itself is reasonably secured_ it won't
be exposed to external threats....

 

[SWANDY]

No reason not to.
I've still got XP running as a VM.
However you need to ensure the VM is not 'exposed' to the outside world, since it will have security issues. Hopefully
you don't use the machine to do anything on the Internet?. If so, set the network to 'host only', and only access
external stuff from the Mac OS, not the VM. This way it becomes able only to access stuff inside the host computer,
and not the rest of the world, but because of this _provided the host computer itself is reasonably secured_ it won't
be exposed to external threats....

Thanks Roger. Right now aside from Windows 7 Updates (and updates for my Antivirus program) I don't really need to access the internet from Windows 7. And I guess if the internet is turned off, I don't need to worry about any future updates for Advast Antivirus anyways.