Conventional wisdom has it that Windows and products from Microsoft are extremely unsafe, easy targets for hackers. That conventional wisdom is wrong, according to security firm Kaspersky Lab’s recent quarterly malware report, which found not a single Microsoft-related threat in the top ten.
The Kapersky Lab quarterly report has this to say about Microsoft products:
For the very first time in its history, the top 10 rating of vulnerabilities includes products from just two companies: Adobe and Oracle (Java), with seven of those 10 vulnerabilities being found in Adobe Flash Player alone. Microsoft products have disappeared from this ranking due to improvements in the automatic Windows update mechanism and the growing proportion of users who have Windows 7 installed on their PCs.
So if you’re running Windows — especially Windows 7 — you don’t need to worry that you’re a sitting duck.
Windows blogger Ed Bott notes that at the Black Hat conference, security expert Chris Paget praised Windows security as well. Paget was hired to find security holes in Vista before it shipped, as a way to make the OS safer. She called Microsoft’s security “world-leading” and said:
“Microsoft’s security process is spectacular.”
So if you’re one of those who thinks that Windows and other Microsoft products are riddled with security holes, the message is simple: You’re living in the past.
Story copyright C 2011 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.
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