The seventh edition of our popular Microsoft Vulnerabilities Report has arrived. The unique research provides comprehensive insight into a year’s worth of vulnerability disclosures by Microsoft in 2019. Encompassing both platforms and products, we not only assess the number of vulnerabilities, but also their severity rating.
By performing this analysis, we can better understand how to mitigate most of the vulnerability-related risks - and doing so is actually a lot easier than you might think! At a time when organizations are under immense pressure to enable remote workforces without compromising security, the ability to achieve quick success is a key requirement when considering solutions that remove admin rights.
2020 Microsoft Vulnerabilities Report: Key Findings
One most striking findings in this year’s research is that vulnerabilities keep rising,. A total of Microsoft 858 vulnerabilities were published throughout last year, a record high since this report began. From a five-year perspective, this marks a 64% increase over the 524 discovered in 2015.
While the total vulnerabilities stat is certainly eye-opening, we place a particular focus on the Critical vulnerabilities. As defined by Microsoft, a ‘Critical’ vulnerability is one “whose exploitation could allow the propagation of an internet worm without user action, and possibly without even a prompt.” These are the most dangerous vulnerabilities as they could allow a remote attacker to execute commands on a vulnerable computer and essentially take full control over it.
