That doesn’t sound good. I for one am glad Microsoft is staying transparent about these things. People don?t yet realize, that by criticizing Microsoft for lack of security in their products, and constantly pushing Microsoft, they are slowly transforming Microsoft and its products into a very powerful security company with the most secure software that will be available in the coming years. Simply because:

  • All those complaints about the lack of security is driving Microsoft insane, and forcing them to take stronger measures when developing their software to begin with, to minimize vulnerabilities. The Trustworthy Computing initiative started a few years ago at Microsoft has really proven to be very effective; the results can for example be seen in Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003. The complaints and attacks on Microsoft’s software have only served to make Microsoft and their products stronger. Just like it took up to version 4 for IE to finally beat Netscape, it took some time for Microsoft to improve and learn from the attacks. But the people at Microsoft are constantly looking at how to make their software better, and they don’t give up easily.

  • They are also causing Microsoft to integrate various tools with their products to help keep users safe and detect security issues in real-time. One of these is Microsoft AntiSpyware and another is the built-in Windows Firewall, which improved for Windows XP SP2, and will only get much better in Longhorn.

  • They are forcing Microsoft to improve and come with better strategies and infrastructures to keep their software up to date and patched in a very straightforward and easy way for end users. Automatic Updates (Windows Update) and Windows Update Services are good examples of this.

  • Because of all the constant attacks on Microsoft’s products, their products are being tested and prepared for security on a global scale unlike any other software product from any of their competitors. When their competitor’s products finally get the honor of being the victim of global virus attacks, Microsoft will be light-years ahead of them in terms of knowing how to deal with these issues and in terms of their software being able to handle such attacks. The result will be that Microsoft will have the most secure software available in the future.

At the end of the day, Microsoft will have everything to guarantee secure software out of the box (as secure as can realistically be), tools to proactively defend and detect, plus a software update infrastructure to get patches and updates to users within minutes. On the other hand, you will have the Linux crowd with their false sense of security doing absolutely nothing or very little to improve, leaving their software wide open for attacks (which is when they will find out how secure their software really is). With no real structure in Linux distribution, even if they do get fixes out, it will be very difficult for people to get those fixes in a timely manner, and to (often manually) install them. It is going to be very interesting to see them wake up from this nightmare. Do you think Michael Robertson’s mom is going to be looking at the news on various websites every week to find out about a fix in the Linux kernel to patch her copy of Linspire Five-O? Or FireFox for that matter? I do know that if she was using Windows XP SP2, the fixes would have downloaded automatically to her computer, and her software would be updated automatically without her even knowing it or having to worry about what all these security patches and other weird computer software technical thingies are. God help her if she would have to recompile the Linux kernel.
And even if she does manage to get a virus on her computer, Microsoft’s monthly virus removal tool will be taking care of that as soon as it gets downloaded. In addition she will have access to Microsoft’s AntiSpyware software, which will help her to determine whether certain software is safe to use. Especially in the case of Spyware it is important that there is software on the system which can help and educate the user about these things because Spyware often misleads the user into installing it onto their computers.