Is Opera As Secure As People Think?

(Migrated weblog post from LSR)

We all know that one of the many punch lines that other browsers, other than Internet Explorer, are currently using to try to get more users to use their browser is the Security features. Both Opera and FireFox have been stating for quite some time that they are far more secure than what IE is. However, as everybody knows, as more and more people move away from IE over to either web browser the chances of increasing the security risks are a lot higher, as can be seen now by FireFox having reached the 50 million downloads.

Then people would tend to spin it in an attempt to be able to address the issue and have it resolved once and for all. And while it may be working at some point we should not forget that popularity has got its own risks and in the web browser world that risk is its security. The more popular a web browser gets the higher the risks. I am sure you will all remember how little we were all to update FireFox with new security fixes when the web browser got started. However, the last few months things have changed a great deal having to go through some major security updates. So it looks like popularity can kill. Or, at least, will try.

And while I am writing about all this I am kind of thinking if the same thing would happen to Opera as well. Just recently we have all read about Opera’s 2 million downloads and although this is really good news I must say that I have got the feeling Opera is heading towards the same road as FireFox. As it becomes more and more popular the bad guys will certainly enjoy having a go and test Opera’s security features. And although at this very moment there doesn’t seem to be too many security issues I would say that these are bound to increase exponentially over the next few months.

We shall see what happens but I just do hope that Opera would be able to keep up with the security fixes pretty much like FireFox has done so far and not like IE is currently doing having too wait, most of the time, longer than you would expect. Speed of execution would be key and having an almost immediate response will keep the expectations high and end-users happy. At least, that is what is happening with FireFox as the download rate continues to grow. Will Opera be able to keep up when the risks come up? … I hope so. But what do you think?