Since I'm trying to poke holes in things today, I thought it may be worthwhile to highlight this Information Week article alleging that Windows Vista is 37% less secure than Windows 2000.

Being the Microsoft skeptic that I am, I don't for a moment believe that the purported company-wide push for more secure systems has had nearly the effect that the company claims. And I do believe that running operating systems which are less widespread (and thus less attractive targets) than XP and Vista is safer (if not intrinsically so). But the numbers presented in the article indicate that some 64% of Vista users should have compromised machines. While Microsoft's own figure of 2.8% of machines is similarly suspect, the idea that nearly two thirds of Vista machines are malware compromised pales only in comparison to applying the same formula to the numbers for XP, which would indicate that every Windows XP machine ever made is now infected by malware.

PC Tools' ThreatFire is the service which came up with this wonder math, but it speaks to the inadvisability of relying on security experts with something to sell to analyze the threat level you face. Like any vendor, they have their own interests in mind (as indeed I have my own in mind as an independent consultant in advising against relying on vendors for the sort of advice that I make a living selling myself) and it's only natural that their estimations will lean toward the theatrical as much as MIcrosoft's will tend to the minimal.