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Vista is more secure than Linux, MacOS X, says MS
by Cyril Kowaliski — 9:27 AM on June 22, 2007

Microsoft is seeing a reversal of fortunes after years of having a less-than-satisfying security record with Windows XP—or so the company claims. On his blog, Microsoft Trustworthy Computing group Security Strategy Director Jeff Jones has published a report that claims fewer serious security vulnerabilities have been found in Windows Vista in the six months after its release than not only Windows XP, but also all major enterprise Linux distributions and Apple's MacOS X.

The results of the analysis show that Windows Vista continues to show a trend of fewer total and fewer High severity vulnerabilities at the 6 month mark compared to its predecessor product Windows XP (which did not benefit from the SDL) and compared to other modern competitive workstation OSes (which also did not benefit from an SDL-like process).

The full report containing numbers and charts is available in this PDF file here. But as eWeek reports, analysts aren't convinced. They believe counting methods are subjective, with Directions on Microsoft analyst Michael Cherry going so far as to say, "If we get obsessed about vulnerability counts we almost put pressure on them to manipulate the count. To not report things."

Tags: Windows