Vista more secure than XP?

Stan Beer
Monday, 04 December 2006 08:31

Opinion and Analysis

Most of us who have played with the Aero interface and Flip 3D know how lovely Vista looks. However, is it really more secure than Windows XP? After all, both operating systems still need firewalls and anti-virus protection.

I have been using Windows XP for years and I have suffered a virus infection on my PC exactly twice.

On one occasion, someone in my household launched one of those bogus "screensavers" which had been sent by email. Even then, that person received a warning from the Norton security system that a dodgy application was about to be executed and had to click OK for it to execute - needless to say that person was very young.

The other occasion was when I foolishly allowed the Norton security system on my laptop to expire and another person in my family accidentally visited a malicious website which downloaded a virus. Had the security system been running, the virus download would have have been stopped.

For the past two years, I have been running the McAfee firewall and anti-virus system. Some users like it; some don't. However, it works for me. It has picked up and stopped one or two attempted virus attacks and knock-on-wood my system remains clean to this day.

Yes, I realize that every month a number of new vulnerabilities are discovered and that Microsoft has to keep patching them via updates. However, the update process is automatic and the worst thing I have to do is reboot my computer for the updates to take effect.

I have been a Mozilla Firefox browser user for nearly two years now with the block pop-ups enabled. Since using it, I can't remember the last time I have received a pop-up ad when visiting a web-site.

The question then is what extra security is Vista going to provide me? From what I can see, there will be a lot more permissions screens asking me to verify that I am who I am so that I can perform any actions I may want to take like deleting applications or installing new ones. It's an extra layer of security we're told. However, the layers I already have in place seem to work just fine.

Maybe (although nothing is certain) Vista would have prevented the young member of my household from infecting my PC with a virus. Then again, maybe I could just as easily prevented my PC from being infected by implementing simple password protection on my system which I clearly should have.

A Microsoft technical spokesman told me some months ago that the enhanced security Vista would result in less vulnerabilities to be fixed on Patch Tuesdays. However, make no mistake, there will be vulnerabilities, updates, virus attacks and infections as there always have been.

On the brighter side of things, Vista is certainly a snazzy looking operating system.