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.
During this period, 39 vulnerabilities, 12 of which were ranked high priority or severe, were found in Microsoft Windows and the company took an average of 21 days to fix them. It's an increase of the 22 vulnerabilities and 13-day turnaround time for the first half of 2006 but still bested the competition handily.
Red Hat Linux was the next-best performer, requiring an average of 58 days to address a total of 208 vulnerabilities. However, this was a significant increase in both problems and fix time over the first half of 2006, when there were 42 vulnerabilities in Red Hat and the average turnaround was 13 days.
The one bright spot in all of this is that of the 208 Red Hat vulnerabilities, the most of the top five operating systems, only two were considered high severity, 130 were medium severity, and 76 were considered low.
Then there's Mac OS X. Despite the latest TV ads ridiculing the security in Vista with a Matrix-like Agent playing the UAC in Vista, Apple has nothing to brag about. Symantec found 43 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X and a 66 day turnaround on fixes. Fortunately, only one was high priority.
Windows the most secure operating system?
Posted on Friday, March 23 2007 @ 15:26 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck