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I hate Microsoft products as much as the next person, but I don’t think your statement is entirely fair: SharePoint isn’t Windows. It’s a Microsoft product tha
by hnlmorg 1y ago
I hate Microsoft products as much as the next person, but I don’t think your statement is entirely fair:
SharePoint isn’t Windows. It’s a Microsoft product that’s only available for Windows Server. But it’s not Windows.
The reason I make that distinction is because if you widen the scope of services available on Linux then you might come a lot closer to the same volume of issues.
For example, take a look at how frequently CVEs are raised against popular CMSs.
- dijit 1y agoSure, I get the point, a more apt comparison might actually be RedHat though, since they're doing E2E packaging for a product suite. I mean, Linux isn't even Linux - At the risk of invoking a meme: Linux is actually GNU + Linux; and even then there's a web-server on top, and software that it runs. So, a working comparison might be Wikipedia? As far as I understand it; that's the largest CMS on the planet.
- hnlmorg 1y agoNeither Wikipedia nor Redhat are as big targets as Microsoft’s ecosystems. Not even remotely.
- dijit 1y agook, nginx+linux power nearly every website, is that close enough of a sizable target? As mentioned, even if we exclude websites, Linux is a pretty enormous target. Much more enormous than microsoft - by an order of magnitude or more, yet: we don’t seem to have these kind of issues. Curious, don’t you think?
- hnlmorg 1y agoNginx doesn’t have the same attack surface. Microsoft’s back office suite is massive. So you’re talking about Nginx + a CMS + online office suite + video conferencing + identity providers and so on and so forth. There isn’t really a direct comparison in the FOSS world. It’s either smaller in scope or smaller in terms of high profile organisation adoption. This is why I think it’s easier to ignore the “Linux” part. Not because Linux is technically a kernel, but because there isn’t a directly comparable solution that targets Linux / GNU or whatever other base OS moniker you want to use. Same is true for BSD, Darwin and so on. The alternatives to Microsoft’s dominance are typically more narrow in scope and usually proprietary too (eg Okta for identities, Google Docs for O365, etc) Does this mean that Microsoft products are secure? Not really. It just means we cannot make a fair comparison against FOSS when it comes to these specific types of attacks.
- notakio 1y agoIf every car in your neighborhood that gets broken into is manufactured by a single manufacturer, it is in your interest in asking why that is, and perhaps considering that fact when shopping for a new car.
- jodrellblank 1y agoIf every car in your neighborhood that gets broken into is manufactured by Ford, but some people keep saying that their sneakers never get broken into, why don't you just walk everywhere, also they've never driven a car and don't really believe anyone else drives a car and keep implying it's just a status symbol... and then they say "okay what if we consider everyone's sneakers all together, and how rarely they get stolen compared to cars" as if they've come up with a sensible comparison in complexity... and then someone suggests "RedHat Linux" as an alternative to your car. Apparently they don't know what section of the world a car fits into, to suggest an alternative - but they're still convinced that you don't need a car and they are genuinely puzzled why more people aren't using "RedHat Linux" instead of cars... ... also only Ford make cars and the only real alternative is something completely different and then pay consultants to customise it and retrain your entire workforce at great cost and upheaval for little to no return, except hoping for an increase in security but not being able to prove same, or even clearly nail down what that means precisely.
- notakio 1y agoOne should be wary of anyone selling you a solution to your problems they know nothing about. Naturally, the only way to be entirely secure is to shutdown all the applications and decommission all the computers, a solution which the business side tends to finds unreasonable. Thus the tender balance between business needs and business risk emerges as the deciding principle. But the numbers are the numbers in heterogenous environments, regarding security problems by platform. And if it rains perpetual Windows-based incidents on your security staff, and you don't consider the numbers when evaluating what you will and will not do, compute/services-wise, then you are statistically likely to see the same rate of incidents, at whatever cost that comes to the business, indefinitely.
- notakio 1y agoVery curious. Just based on the incidents we see, and analyze over time, almost all of them are compromised Windows systems. When I say "almost", I'll provide these stats: ~4500 Windows incidents over 5 years, vs. two Linux incidents. Similarly, looking at vulnerability counts by vendor doesn't paint a rosy picture of our largest vendor Microsoft, either. But it pales in comparison to the incident statistics, which speak for themselves. To Microsoft's credit, they've managed to turn their weaknesses into a secondary industry, wherein they now no longer sell just the disease, they also sell the cure. "Oh, your Windows systems have security problems? Have we told you about our expansive security solutions? They're only an additional $your_budget_doubled per year!"
- kuhsaft 1y agoThe closest comparison to SharePoint is probably a combination of Zoho Connect, Zoho WorkDrive, and Zoho Flow. Zoho's office suite also integrates with WorkDrive and has collaborative editing. They even have a desktop app for Writer. Even then, SharePoint is more of a platform. You can build SharePoint apps and extend it. There isn't a comparison for SharePoint Server. There really isn't any single thing like it for on-premise.
- graemep 1y ago> For example, take a look at how frequently CVEs are raised against popular CMSs. One popular CMS in particular?