You hear it all the time. It’s almost considered common knowledge that Microsoft’s Windows operating system is insecure, unsafe, and an easy target for hackers.
But now, according to renown security firm Kaspersky Lab, that conventional wisdom is just plain wrong.
In their latest quarterly malware report, Kaspersky Lab’s discovered that none of the top 10 malware and security threats are Microsoft-related. That’s right… not even ONE.
“For the very first time in its history, the top 10 rating of vulnerabilities includes products from just two companies: Adobe and Oracle (Java), with seven of those 10 vulnerabilities being found in Adobe Flash Player alone,” says Kaspersky Lab.
“Microsoft products have disappeared from this ranking due to improvements in the automatic Windows update mechanism and the growing proportion of users who have Windows 7 installed on their PCs.”
So what does this mean for us everyday computer users? Basically, if you’re running Windows — especially Windows 7 — you don’t need to worry that you’re such an easy target.
Windows blogger Ed Bott adds that at the Black Hat conference, security expert Chris Paget praised Windows security as well. Paget was hired to find security holes in Vista before it shipped, as a way to make the OS safer. She called Microsoft’s security “world-leading” and said:
“Microsoft’s security process is spectacular.”
So if you’re one of those who thinks that Windows and other Microsoft products are riddled with security holes, the message is simple: You’re living in the past.
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