Mac OS X tops vulnerabilities chart for April

Security company Secunia has released its latest quarterly Vulnerability Update covering the period from February to April 2015.

It looks at the top 20 products with the most vulnerabilities each month and finds that there have been a total of 1,691 new vulnerabilities appearing in the top 20 over the three month period.

The vendor with most vulnerable products in the quarter was IBM, but the top spot for highest number of vulnerabilities in a single product goes to Avant Browser in February and Apple Mac OS X in April, each with 84. March's chart is topped by Google Chrome with 51 vulnerabilities.

Cisco IOS put in an appearance in March with 23 vulnerabilities. Whilst that's not a huge number it does emphasize the need to be aware of problems coming from unexpected directions. Cisco IOS is the operating system used on the many of the routers that operate the Internet, and also on the Cisco network switches found in many company networks.

Windows 8 has made the list every month, with 25 vulnerabilities in February, 31 in March and 24 in April. As did Windows Server 2012 with 25, 32 and 24. Windows 7 just sneaked into the bottom of March's top 20 with 20 vulnerabilities.

There have been seven publicly disclosed zero-day vulnerabilities in the first four months of 2015, all of them in Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Windows. Cause for concern as these are two of the most widespread programs globally, on both private PCs and corporate networks.

What's interesting is how varied the monthly lists are. Although there are some products that appear regularly there are also a variety of others making 'guest appearances' underlining the need to stay vigilant and ensure that all of your software -- not just the operating system -- has the latest patches installed.

The full report is available to download from the Secunia website.

Image Credit: Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock