Forget about Linux, Mac OS X Tiger and Windows XP, Windows Vista is the most secure operating system available on the market. Microsoft has applauded Vista from the get go as the most secure Windows platform, but according to a comparison put together by Jeff Jones, Security Strategy Director in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, the status quo is also valid for rival operating systems. Windows XP, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Workstation, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, Apple Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger and Windows Vista are the operating systems evaluated by Jones. At the bottom of this article, you will be able to find graphics with details of the comparison. Additionally, you can also access the .pdf version of the Windows Vista 6-Month Vulnerability Report authored by Jeff Jones.

"Windows Vista holds up well in this comparison, showing a significantly improved vulnerability profile over its first 180 days of availability compared to Windows XP and the other operating systems that were examined. It's interesting to note that Windows Vista is being subjected to a greater level of scrutiny than its predecessor, as tools used by security researchers have become significantly more sophisticated since Windows XP was released," revealed Austin Wilson of Microsoft's Windows Client Group.

"The results of the analysis show that Windows Vista continues to show a trend of fewer total and fewer High severity vulnerabilities at the 6 month mark compared to its predecessor product Windows XP (which did not benefit from the SDL) and compared to other modern competitive workstation OSes (which also did not benefit from an SDL-like process). If you share the opinion that Windows and applications ported to Windows get a higher level of researcher scrutiny than other OSes, then the 6-month results are even more positive. If you don't share that opinion, then they still stand on their own ..." Jones stated.

Microsoft made Windows Vista available to businesses on November 30 2006 and to the general public on January 30 2007. The Redmond Company's position is that the additional security mitigations set in place for Windows Vista, along with the development process focused on building secure code, have bulletproofed the operating system to an extent where it can now at least match, if not even outperform rival products such as Linux and Mac OS X Tiger.

"Of course, we're always working harder to further reduce the number of vulnerabilities in our products. Windows Vista was our first client release to leverage the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) throughout the entire development cycle. As new techniques for finding vulnerabilities are discovered, we make updates to the SDL which will be used in the development of future products," Wilson added.