Businesses second guess move to Vista
Microsoft has had few successes in pushing Vista on the masses. Most people running older systems and hardware saw no reason to upgrade because that would require almost completely new hardware and peripherals or finding Vista drivers for existing equipment. The average consumer is not going to jump through those loops and neither are businesses.
According to ComputerWorld, fewer businesses are planning to make the switch to Vista than seven months ago. Further, some are considering making the switch to Mac or Linux.
Part of this is due to the fact that hard data regarding Vista’s abilities are now available as opposed to when it first released, mostly regarding security features. Right after Vista launched and in the few months following the launch, Vista was perceived as being more secure than XP. Today, only 28% of companies agreed Vista was more secure, 24% said it wasn’t as secure or was equal to XP and 49% were undecided.
For now, zero day attacks are the main concern for Vista. To its credit, Vista does very well against known threats but pretty much tanks when a zero day exploit occurs and we’re talking about an undefended installation. Add a good security suite like McAfee or Norton 360 and most of the worries disappear. A 100% defense against these kind of threats simply isn’t possible but a 90% to 99% is.
Charles Kolodgy, a researcher with the IDC said, “The prospect of zero-day attacks is extremely troubling for organizations of all sizes.” Vista has seen a few zero day attacks, in the lab, even fewer of them made it in practice. The most serious threat that comes to my mind was the fake Microsoft update email that downloaded a virus which stole your data, used your Internet connection to send the data back to the hacker and then erased your hard drive.
No one should have to say this but it seems the “average” user isn’t getting the message. Microsoft will never send you an email with download links to the updates, all its updates are provided via Windows or Microsoft update. This should be blatantly obvious and yet some still fell for the trick.
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