Software developers rank Linux security higher than Windows

A security survey by BZ Research polled 6,344 software development managers about the security of different enterprise OSs. In considering attacks against operating systems, Windows Server was ranked insecure or very insecure by 58% of respondents, compared with 13% for Linux and 6% for Solaris. 74% ranked Linux secure or very secure, compared to 66% for Solaris and 38% for Windows Server. For application-related security issues 58% rated Windows insecure or very insecure, compared with 18% for Linux. Linux was called secure or very secure by 66% compared with 30% for Windows Server. Open source generally was considered more secure than proprietary software in four of eight categories: client operating systems (44% vs 17%), Web servers (43% vs 14%), server operating systems (38% vs 22%) and components and libraries (34% vs 18%). Proprietary software was ranked as more secure in database servers (34% vs 21%), while the results were tied for client applications, server applications and application servers.