ActiveX is still available on Windows 10, it has nothing to do with security aside from being shoved into IE4 as a way for Microsoft to lock the web into Wintel

ActiveX is still available on Windows 10, it has nothing to do with security aside from being shoved into IE4 as a way for Microsoft to lock the web into Wintel back when Java's crossplatform-ness was seen as threatening to their desktop dominance - and thus gaining a bad name because it really wasn't designed for such a use. ActiveX is just a standardized way to embed controls, in practice it isn't any difference than any desktop application that has support for plugins nor any less (or more) safer than that. COM in general is just a standardized form of a plugin system with a bunch of predefined interfaces (or binary protocols if you want) for applications that weren't written with each other in mind to still be able to work together and share functionality.