In raw numbers, Apple has the most vulnerabilities

A new report from security firm Secunia has found that Apple’s products have more vulnerabilities than anyone else.

However, the threats that Apple users face are not as risky or damaging as those on PC platforms. And when the companies are divided between PC and Mac, PC users still account for about 90% of all vulnerabilities.

All that being said, it is not a statistic for Apple to overlook. In Secunia’s latest report, it shows that the number of Apple vulnerabilities is rising, as the not-so-coveted top spot on the list used to belong to Oracle.

Secunia’s full top 10 list of the companies with the most technical vulnerabilities is as follows:

1) Apple

2) Oracle

3) Microsoft

4) HP

5) Adobe

6) IBM

7) VMware

8) Cisco

9) Google

10) Mozilla

Those companies accounted for 38% of all vulnerabilities found in 2009. And their numbers have not gone down.

“Despite increased investments into the security of their products, none of the seven vendors who occupied the Top-10 group in 2005 as well as in 2010 managed to decrease the number of vulnerabilities discovered in their products. On the contrary, the vulnerability count of each of these seven vendors has increased to reach in 2009 between 136% and 440% of the 2005 count,” the report says.

Secunia noted that most of Apple’s vulnerabilities were theoretical in nature, and Microsoft’s vulnerabilities have the highest level of demonstrability. I guess the point is: there will always be a risk to going online.