On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 5:18 PM, John Hornbuckle <[email protected]> wrote: > But under the hood, > Vista had a number of security improvements over XP.
I wrote "real-world better security" for a reason. Sure, Vista has a huge number of "security improvements" -- if all you do is read the marketing brochure. I'm talking about actual, realized, practical security improvements. Not "Microsoft promises this OS is secure. And this time, they *really mean it*.". > As I recall, IE's "Protected Mode" feature only works on Vista/Win7, > and that's a security benefit for shops using IE. Right, but I'm not convinced IE's protected mode really yields much realized benefit. It seems like Vista is still vulnerable for most of the IE bulletins. It certainly hasn't been stopping stupid lusers from falling for trojan horses. > The driver model is more secure than XP's. Sure it is. /SARCASM "Drivers" is to Microsoft as "sunspots" is to the BOFH. Bluescreens? Drivers. System incompatibilities? Drivers. Security problems? Drivers. Global warming? Drivers. Microsoft has been blaming all their problems on driver-related issues since Windows 95. I'm not buying it anymore. At this point, I'm going to say it's Microsoft's fault for their inability to produce a driver model that actually survives past the next major release without being blamed for all the problems in the previous release. > The firewall is more sophisticated. Well, it's certainly more complicated. > Vista uses ASLR, which I don't think XP had. XP does not have ASLR. Hmmm. Okay, I'll buy this From what I've read, this kind of thing can help reduce simple attacks, and there are a lot of simple attacks in the world. I'm not sure how much of a difference it's making, but I'll buy it. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
