Symantec: 'Windows is the safest operating system'

Perhaps Microsoft's popularity is partly due to unsafe products with a series of deadly security bugs.

But in the latest report, security firm Symantec claims that Windows is the safest operating system. Not only that, Microsoft is also the company doing the best work to overcome security issues arising in products.

Symantec's recently published Security Threat Internet report said the number of security patches for Windows operating systems in the second half of 2006 was the least compared to other similar products. The time to release a Microsoft patch is also shortest if placed in comparison with other companies.

During that period, there were a total of 39 security flaws discovered in Windows - 12 of them were classified as extremely dangerous. This number is higher than the number of the first 6 months with 22 errors. On average, Microsoft took 21 days to fix those errors.

Red Hat Linux came in second with a total of 208 security flaws with an average patch time of 58 days. This number of security flaws is nearly 5 times higher than the figure of the first 6 months of 2006. Red Hat usually only takes 13 days to overcome the errors.

But the 208 number of security flaws is really some astonishing. This is the highest number of security bugs among the five operating systems mentioned in Symantec's report. Of Red Hat Linux's 208 bugs, 130 were classified as dangerous.

Next up is Mac OS X from Apple. Symantec found a total of 43 security flaws in the operating system and said Apple often took 66 days to fix the problem. But luckily there was only one error out of those 43 errors ranked as dangerous.

Meanwhile, the first 6 months of Mac OS X only had 21 security bugs and Apple took only 37 days to fix.

In the next position is HP-UX of Hewlett Packard and Sun's Solaris. HP-UX has 98 security bugs with an average troubleshooting time of 101 days. Sun also took longer - 122 days - to fix 63 of his security errors.

Alfred Huger - Vice President of Engineering for Symantec Security Center - said the problem is really a problem with web applications. 2/3 of security errors belong to these applications. The problem with the operating system is sometimes just "junk". Although the manufacturer takes a long time to fix it, users still accept it.

Microsoft representatives confirmed that the company still took security as a focus and a high effort to protect customers. Apple shares the same opinion. But Sun expressed disagreement with Symantec's data and declined to comment.

Hoang Dung