> but MS really doubled down on systematic improvements
Doesn't seem to have really worked for MS though, as evidenced by their many significant security lapses over the last several years.
The US Gov even officially called them out on it a few months ago, specifically singling out MS for their atrocious repeated security fuck ups.
Downvotes accepted, I guess, but there was a step-change improvement. References:
https://www.itprotoday.com/attacks-breaches/the-story-behind...
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2022/01/21/cel...
...while they may also (deservedly) be getting flack now, 20 years ago it was orders of magnitude worse.