Some Interesting & Informative Data from Microsoft

Microsoft bi-annually posts on it’s website what they refer to as the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report. The current report encompasses a time frame spanning from January to June 2009, and it offers a slew of interesting and very valuable information. It is very interesting to see what types of vulnerabilities and malware are thriving and in what areas of the world. It also shows what Microsoft and outside software companies are contributing to these threats. All of this is done utilizing color coded and easy to read charts and graphs with dialog explaining the meanings of all this data.

A couple of things that stood out to me is the problems that have arisen due to the Adobe suite of software, actually maybe it is not that surprising being that we are being inundated with security updates, from Adobe, on what seems a weekly basis. The disparaging differences between the exploits and infestations occurring in XP and Vista also made me wince. It will be interesting to see what the differences are once Windows 7 is part of the report.

You can download this report by going to Microsoft’s site, by clicking HERE. There are two different versions of the report in two different formats. I would recommend downloading the 19 page summary version (1.7 mb) as a PDF. It also comes in XPS format. The full comprehensive report is 232 pages (10.3 mb) and contains the exact same charts and graphs.

After reviewing this, kindly leave a comment and let me know what you see as surprising and interesting. I would like to see different views.

Here is the link to Microsoft…..

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=037f3771-330e-4457-a52c-5b085dc0a4cd&displaylang=en