How Secure is Windows, Really?

While I realize there's a certain amount of "preaching to the choir" in this
particular email, I still think that it's important to end the year with a
real world look at the security of Windows.

The Windows apologists have recently jumped on the "Vista is the most secure
Windows ever" bandwagon and managed to morph that into saying that Windows
is somehow comparable in security to the iSeries.

NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH.

I subscribe to Windows Secrets (a newsletter I highly recommend to anyone
who has Windows machines in their network).  Go here for the current
edition:

http://windowssecrets.com/comp/061229

In it, you'll find a brief article on ten current outstanding security
threats ranging from Denial of Service to Remote Control, some of which have
been outstanding since October.

The article also points to a great page on this topic from the SANS Internet
Storm Center:

http://www.incidents.org/diary.php?storyid=1940&isc=56bdbad9f85fa3427d43ec6b
fdd4c389

This lists the 10 outstanding incidents and shows that, for client versions
of the OS, four are rated critical and one important.  For server versions,
the issues are not as critical, but instead six are rated as important.

My favorite, though, is the one marked "unknown", in which Microsoft
"accidentally" released a patch that caused a security hole on Macintosh
computers.  Oooops!  <grin>

Joe