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Good Samaritans Choose Linux
blowdart writes "According to this article on the BBC news site the charity Samaritans has chosen Linux to provide it with more secure and powerful computer systems. The installation was supplied by Trustix with IBM providing network security. 'One of the great challenges for computing in any charity is to provide more for less,' said Mike Hermon, Information Systems Manager at Samaritans. According to the Trustix press release the installation is limited to security hardware only, "Samaritans is installing a four zone Trustix Firewall on an IBM eServer x305 and a Trustix Proxy Server on an IBM eServer x300 server.'" Oddly enough, today's Word A Day is Good Samaritan.
"more than 50 percent of all security advisories that CERT issued in the first 10 months of 2002 were for Linux and other open-source software solutions.
Proprietary UNIX solutions were responsible for just as many security advisories as Linux in the same time period.
Ok now lets assume that by Proprietary they mean close source UNIX (like Solaris, AIX, HPUX, ...) if this is the case than Linux + Open source accounted for more than 50% of the CERTS, but Proprietary accounted for as many as linux that adds up to more than 100% without certs from any OS outside of UNIX.
"Trojan horse-based attacks on Linux, UNIX, and open-source projects jumped from one in 2001 to two in 2002."
This is what I find disturbing not only is it lumping Linux and Unix certs together to outnumber MS, is throws all open source projects (eg Apache, Samba, ...) into the same bin. It also give no numbers for **THIS** year (the one MS is supposedly more secure than Linux in), all it say is Linux went up from 1, and MS went down from 6.
Finally there is the following "many Linux distributions lack the sophisticated automatic-update technologies modern Windows versions contain"
Many distros by % of linus market, or by joe blow put a distro out. Redhat, Mandrake, and Suse I know have this feature, and it can run on any Distro if you dl it.
This article provides no numbers, groups together not only multiple operating systems but multiple applications in order to meet is goal (does it cout certs for Apache that hinder windows as being only an open source problem for linux, because that is what is sounds like). Basically its FUD with no substance. If this moron (the writer of the article not the /. poster) wants to make a point I suggest he actually use numbers and not vague referances, he should also learn to compare apples with apples.