There have been lots of discussions and opinions that Mac OS X is more secure than Windows by far, that Windows is a sinking ship with too many holes. Well, the truth is out, for the first six months Windows Vista is in the market, it is proven that it is more secure than any other major OS out there.
Operating System Vulnerabilities – First 6 months Full packages
High severity vulnerabilities – first 6 months – all packages
Let me skip all those Linux distros, but concentrate on just Windows and Mac OS X.
From the graph, we can see that although Windows XP has less vulnerabilities compared to Mac OS X, but out of all those vulnerabilities, Windows XP has more that are categorized as High Severity, like those that can allow hackers outside to gain control of your machine without you knowing or do anything.
The good thing is, with Windows Vista, the outlook is so much brighter. It has less vulnerabilities, even for High Severity levels. Coupled that, if you agree, with the fact that Windows gets more security scrutiny than any other OS, makes the result even more impressive.
Now, why do we “feel” that Windows is more insecure? The answer lies not in the operating system, but with the users. yeah, you and me. We, humans, are the curious bunch of creatures that will click on anything that comes our way, right right? including fishy message like: “Click here to know who blocks your MSN”, or “Download latest <whatever> here”, or “Screensaver with Jessica Alba photos”, or “Watch dancing baby” etc. You get the idea. We click on those links, we download attachments from people we don’t know, and with that, we infected our own machine, and we blame our system for it. The system is responsible for it, but we have to at least share the responsibility as well. The answer to security lies in user education. Just DON’T click on “funny” links and you’ll be safe. Just DON’T.
The full research article can be read from http://blogs.csoonline.com/windows_vista_6_month_vulnerability_report
