OpenOffice Security: Benefit or harm?
- IT TOPICS:Open Source, Security
This CW article says that OpenOffice is essentially more vulnerable to attacks than Microsoft Office and that the developers of OpenOffice failed to take many of the lessons learned by MSFT into account. I see a couple of points here that may kind of contradict each other.
I would think that when it comes to worms and viruses, you are still more secure using OpenOffice for now because bad guys don't spend a lot of time writing malware for slightly used products. This goes back to the point that if you run Groupwise or Lotus Notes Mail that you are inherently more secure because worms aren't written for these as often. This is a valid point. However, look at the next point.
Taking point one into consideration and given the nature of today's more targeted attacks, you could be less secure if you have something a bad guy really wants. There is more of a chance (it seems) of finding vulnerabilities in OpenOffice than in MSFT Office (and that is saying something!). From a risk standpoint, it totally depends on the nature of your business if this is something to take into consideration.
Either way, OpenOffice gives you good functionality and does not cause significant compatibilty problems when the rest of the world uses Office. It is a valid choice, but you have to take in consideration all factors before you make a choice.
Update: Here's an interesting take on this, which would invalidate my first point after some time.
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