Researchers Chris Valasek (Senior Security Researcher at Coverity) and Tarjei Mandt (senior vulnerability researcher at Azimuth Security) spend their days seeking ways to compromise security in Windows. They're good guys; if they find a problem they report it, rather than exploiting it for illicit gain. At the Black Hat conference they reported on their analysis of new low-level security features in Windows 8.
The precise details of what they discovered were barely within the realm of my comprehension. Apparently many doubly-linked lists within Windows 8 are now protected by "pool cookies." To avoid exploits that involve forcing arbitrary code or data into places it doesn't belong, Windows 8 randomizes locations for memory allocation and adds "guard pages" as needed. That sort of thing.
In between slides filled with code and intense details, Valasek and Mandt displayed a couple that anybody could understand. The column for Windows Vista was all red, meaning not secure. Windows 7 was close, with just a few green checkmarks. And of course Windows 8 displayed a column of solid green checkmarks. Expert or not, we know that green is good.
