Microsoft says Vista and Windows 7 are one of the most secure OSes

Windows generally has a lesser reputation in terms of security when put up against Linux and Apple. But this didn’t stop Microsoft’s chief operating officer Kevin Turner, from making this daring statement at the Midmarket CIO Summit:

Vista today, post-Service Pack 2, which is now in the marketplace, is the safest, most reliable OS we’ve ever built. It’s also the most secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple Leopard. It’s the safest and most secure OS on the planet today. Everything that we’ve learned in Vista will be leveraged in Windows 7, but certainly when we broke a lot of the compatibility issues to lock down user account controls, to lock down the ability to manipulate states and all the things, that was a very painful process for us to grow through, but we had to do it. And the reason that Windows 7 will be successful is because of the pain we took on Vista. Because from a compatibility standpoint, if it works on Vista, it will work on Windows 7. If it doesn’t work on Vista, it won’t work on Windows 7.

It was pretty bold of Turner to place Windows on the same field as Linux and Leopard and claim them all as most seure OSes on the planet. He just placed three very different OSes in comparison and called them the most secure - how does that work?

Here are a few comments from the community in response to his statement. The first one is from Adrian at ZDNet. I don’t understand why Adrian feels Microsoft is calling Windows the most secure OS, since Turner made sure to include Linux, open source (?), and Leopard.

Being primarily a Windows user, I can’t help but feel that Microsoft’s “most secure OS on the planet� statement is rooted more in hyperbole than fact. If Turner had said “most secure Windows OS on the planet� I might have been happy to buy that. But to say that it’s more secure than Mac OS X or Linux, gimme a break. All my Windows machines are beefed up with additional body armor in the form of firewalls and antivirus applications, additions that are unnecessary on my Linux or Mac systems.

Ron from LockerGnome raised a good point:

Is it the OS that protects the user or the user that protects the OS? Let me explain. I’ve used Windows since Windows 3 and have used every version up to and including Windows 7 beta. I personally have never had an infection on any of my computers. Yet millions of other have been infected. I know some of you who visit LG regularly have also stated that you also have never been infected.

At the end of the day, no matter how secure Microsoft claims Windows to be, it would be a difficult statement to believe in. With the largest market share in the world, common sense tells us attackers would go for what affects most people, and that there are more attackers using Windows and are familiar with it than any other operating system. Can Windows ever be the most secure OS? What’s your take on this?