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In what is describes as 'the most comprehensive study ever undertaken', mi2g's Intelligence Unit analysed over 235,000 security breaches against permanently online systems and found that Mac OS X or BSD (on which OS X is partly based) accounted for just 4.82 per cent of all successful attacks. Linux was the least secure, with 65.64 per cent while Windows accounted for most of the remainder.

In Government environments, where

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breaches should be treated with the utmost concern, the positions of Windows and Linux are reversed, due in no small part to a succession of worms and trojans directed against Microsoft's OS.

'More and more smart individuals, government agencies and corporations are shifting towards Apple and BSD environments in 2004,' said DK Matai, executive chairman of mi2g. 'For how long can the truth remain hidden that the great emperors of the software industry are wearing no clothes fit for the fluid environment in which computing takes place, where new threats manifest every hour of every day?

'There is an accelerating paradigm shift visible in 2004 and busy professionals have spotted the benefits of Apple and BSD because they don't have the time to cope with umpteen flavours of Linux or to wait for Microsoft's Longhorn when Windows XP has proved to be a stumbling block in some well chronicled instances.'

For more information visit www.mi2g.com.