Vista Declared Most Secure OS
Microsoft’s Director of Security, Jeff Jones, published the One Year Vulnerability Report for Windows Vista, in which he demonstrates that Vista is the most secure OS ever measured (based on the criteria used to calculate the first year vulnerability report).
Granted, the declaration came from Microsoft, so many will take it with the proverbial ‘grain of salt’, or discredit it entirely. For example, Eric Shultze, the CTO of patch management company Shavlik Technologies, was quoted in an InfoWeek article stating “When you start counting vulnerabilities, it’s a matter of defining vulnerabilities. For example, if a bulletin is released for Internet Explorer, that’s one patch for IE. Microsoft may have broken it out to say there are five distinct issues fixed in this patch. Is that five vulnerabilities or is that one vulnerability because it’s one patch?”
Of course, any time Microsft claims that their software is secure, particularly if they claim it is more secure than anything else, it is going to generate a fair amount of controversy. Some of the accusations have been that Microsoft bent or invented statistics that make them look good, or that the picture they painted is only true of a narrow configuration of Windows Vista and not the operating system as a whole.
Well, my fellow Microsoft MVP, Jesper Johansson, takes an in-depth look at the various claims and backs them up with hard data on his blog. As co-author of Windows Vista Security, I think Jesper is more than qualified to analyze the issue. Check out Do Vista User’s Need Fewer Security Patches Than XP Users? for a fairly detailed breakdown of the data.
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Tony Bradley
www.tonybradley.com
Essential. Computer. Security.