Windows Vista Reports

A pair of reports were issued by Microsoft yesterday.

Jeff R. Jones issued "Windows Vista One Year Vulnerability Report", providing an analysis of vulnerabilities reported and security updates for Windows Vista's first year. Although Jeff's report is directed toward Systems Administrators, pointing out the reduction in patch events resulting in less work, the report also included is an interesting comparison with Windows XP as well as "competing" operating systems Red Hat, Ubuntu and Apple.

Download the PDF from Jeff Jones Security Blog.

As Austin Wilson pointed out in the second report, Windows Vista Security One Year Later",

"Also from the One Year Vulnerability Report, we see that Windows Vista in its first year had significantly fewer fixed and unfixed vulnerabilities than Windows XP in its first year: 36 fixed/30 unfixed for Windows Vista vs. 68 fixed/54 unfixed for Windows XP."

Another issue pointed out by Austin is that there were 60% fewer malware infections in the first half of 2007 on Windows Vista. I look forward to the next update of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIR) to find out the impact in the second half of 2007 of increased usage of Windows Vista combined with more advanced/experienced users.