Kaspersky has beaten the drum of Microsoft security in concert with the commercial availability of Windows Vista and with the Redmond juggernaut's first baby steps on the security market. And who can blame them? Kaspersky survives off of Windows. The fact that Kaspersky's products have passed the VB100 test for Vista while OneCare managed to miss a piece of malware and failed goes to show that the Russian AV maker knows a thing or two about security.

And Alisa Shevchenko, Virus analyst, Kaspersky Lab has even taken a swing at Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista, not the version designed for Windows XP. "The IE7 security features should, in theory, protect the computer against exploits placed on web sites which then execute malicious code or install a Trojan to the system," commented Shevchenko.

Now, I am not the first one to jump in Microsoft's defense. In fact, far from it. But Kaspersky's take on Internet Explorer 7 is just a blow under the belt. Kaspersky criticized Protect Mode, ActiveX Opt-in and the Cross-Domain Scripting Attack Prevention. But without providing any real facts. Just warning about the possibility of vulnerabilities and exploits.

Now I have been extensively using Internet Explorer 7 since it came out in October 2006. And for the first time ever in my experience with Microsoft's browsers I accessed websites regardless of the warnings that they might contain malware. The result? No drive-by exploits, no DoS attacks, no infections. My Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows Workstations, which I am also running since even before IE7, says I'm clean as a whistle.

Now, if IE7 is as vulnerable as Kaspersky claims, what does that say about the Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows Workstations?