Mahmoud Kassem

Washington Post Security Fix spent the past several weeks compiling statistics on how long it took some of the major software vendors to issue patches for security flaws in their products. Since Microsoft Windows is the most-used operating system in the world, it makes sense to lead off with data on Microsoft's security updates in 2006.

In contrast, Internet Explorer's closest competitor in terms of market share -- Mozilla's Firefox browser -- experienced a single period lasting just nine days last year in which exploit code for a serious security hole was posted online before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem.

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