Microsoft slow to resolve browser vulnerabilities

Secunia, a vulnerability-testing company located in Copenhagen, Denmark, released a report earlier this week that highlights the security performance of the top browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Interestingly, 115 bugs and flaws - including security and non-security issues - were reported for Firefox in 2008, while on 31 were reported for IE.

However, Firefox bugs were resolved far more quickly than IE issues. In fact, as of December 31, 2008, Microsoft still had not resolved three security vulnerabilities that had been disclosed more than 200 days earlier.

While security patches for Firefox are available, on average, about 43 days after they are reported, Microsoft has required an average of more than 95 days to resolve security issues -- not including those that have not yet been resolved.

For these types of reasons, it is no surprise that Microsoft's share of market in browser usage has dropped from nearly 75% a year ago to 67.44% in January.

More Information:

• Browser Research from Secunia
• Browser Market Share Statistics from Net Applications