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Surprise, Windows Listed as Most Secure OS

Posted by Zonk on from the opposite-day dept.

david_g17 writes "According to a Symantec study reported by Information Week, Microsoft has the most secure operating system amongst its commercial competitors. The report only covered the last 6 months of vulnerabilities and patch releases, but the results place Microsoft operating systems above Mac OS X and Red Hat. According to the article, 'The report found that Microsoft Windows had the fewest number of patches and the shortest average patch development time of the five operating systems it monitored in the last six months of 2006.' The article continues to mention the metrics used in the study (quantity and severity of vulnerabilities as well as the amount of time one must wait for the patch to be released)."

2 of 499 comments (clear)

  1. Who is Symantec biggest customer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Isn't it windows users? Isn't windows the only OS in the world that needs the services of Symantec? Isn't Symantec releasing a study like this that finds their biggest customer the "most secure" to be fataly flawed just on the basis of conflict of interest alone?

  2. Re:Actually by gig · · Score: 1, Redundant

    > Spyware etc. targeting Windows desktops is a problem with SPYWARE, not with Windows per se.

    NO, a thousand times no. Bill Gates makes this same excuse and it is bullshit.

    When there is stuff growing on your product and not on your competitor's products it is not because we unfortunately we live in a universe in which stuff can grow. It is because you didn't build that thing right.

    Since 1999 the Mac has had a built-in program called Software Update that checks a server at Apple once a day/week/month as the user prefers and identifies all of the updates for all of the software that came with the box, and offers to install them for the user. Since Apple publishes a new revision of Mac OS X quarterly, and this is fed through Software Update, the Mac OS is a moving target. If you figure out a way to own every v10.4.2 Mac you had better enjoy it because in a few months the whole platform will move over to v10.4.3.

    When you compare that to the static target that Windows XP presented, with its hard-to-navigate Explorer-based updates which were themselves hacked, and XP SP2's life-span of like 4 straight years, it is like Microsoft is asking for it. The fact that there are more PC's than Macs only makes this even worse. They are not doing what needs to be done to serve the most basic needs of their customers.