Are Open Source databases more secure?

Open Source Software is gaining acceptance, particularly in the arena of infrastructure and development platforms. Many medium and large corporations have a growing number of Linux implementations, the Open Source operating system started as a project at the University of Helsinki in 1991 by the Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds. More often than not this is because it was the cheapest way for IT to develop test systems, and then the usage has grown from the test environment to operational systems, but the pace has increased as the platform has been embraced by major suppliers like Dell Computers and IBM .

Interest is growing in Open Source databases and security is a large part of the reason why, according to a recent US survey by Evans Data. While 85 percent of the 400 companies surveyed said proprietary database servers were compromised at least once in the last year, only 9 percent of those using open source databases reported the same. The study also finds that use of MySQL, the popular open source database, increased over 25 percent in the last six months and that 44 percent of developers are now using it. Interestingly, the suggestion is that the open source community can respond more quickly to vulnerabilities than can developers of proprietary software. Factors like these are only going to increase the pace of adoption when they come to the attention of safety conscious senior executives.

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