Windows security and the security of Windows compared to Linux

Window server security was made a top priority by Microsoft about three years ago, and since then Microsoft have heavily invested in a multi-pronged effort to improve software quality and development processes, and to reduce the risks for customers through education and guidance, industry collaboration and enforcement.

Microsoft are the only software platform to have invested as much in security R&D, process improvements and customer education.

Still, Linux has often been touted as a more secure platform. In part, this is because of the "many eyeballs" maxim of open source software that claims a correlation between the number of developers looking at code and the number of bugs found and resolved.

While this has some validity, it is not necessarily the best way to develop secure software for Window servers. Microsoft believe in the effectiveness of a structured software engineering process that includes a deep focus on quality, technology advances, and vigorous testing to make their Window servers more secure.

Are Linux servers more secure than Window servers?

A number of third-party reports have questioned how safe the Linux platform really is. For example, a recent independent study by Forrester, Is Linux More Secure than Windows?, highlighted that the four major Linux distributions have a higher incidence and severity of vulnerabilities, and are slower than Microsoft to provide security updates.

According to Forrester, Microsoft had the lowest elapsed time between disclosure of a vulnerability and the release of a fix. They found that Microsoft addressed all of the 128 publicly disclosed security flaws in Window servers over the 12-month period studied, and that its security updates predated major outbreaks by an average of 305 days.

Other independent sources of data show similar conclusions. According to statistics posted on the security website Secunia, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 has averaged 7.4 security advisories per month, compared with 1.7 advisories for Window Server 2003.

And as Yankee Group noted in its Linux, Unix and Windows TCO Comparison study, "Linux-specific worms and viruses are every bit as pernicious as their Unix and Window counterparts and in many cases they are much more stealthy."

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