Security · head-to-head
Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) vs UK Police
MSRC's CVRF API serves Microsoft's own machine-readable security-update bulletins: list every bulletin's ID and dates from `/updates`, then pull one full document by ID (e.g. "2026-Jan") from `/cvrf/{id}` -- as CVRF XML by default, or the same CVRF document serialised to JSON under an `Accept: application/json` header. It's a fully public, unauthenticated REST endpoint with no signup or key required, backing tools like the community MsrcSecurityUpdates PowerShell module. Two traps confirmed live: the OData-shaped response envelope is misleading (most `$filter`/`$top` syntax 500s, and there's no CVE-to-bulletin lookup at all), and the separately documented `/csaf/{id}` route rejected all 17 id formats probed with "Invalid ID format" -- so despite the CSAF branding, the JSON this API actually returns is CVRF, not CSAF. The old stored URL pointed at the unrelated Report Abuse API's developer page; the live developer portal for this security-updates API now redirects straight to its published OpenAPI/Swagger definition.
The UK Police API publishes crime, stop-and-search, and neighbourhood-policing data reported by the 43 territorial forces of England and Wales, going back to December 2010 for street-level crime. It's a keyless JSON REST API -- force listings, neighbourhood team info, individual crime and outcome records, geo-radius crime queries -- released under the Open Government Licence, so results can be reused (including commercially) with attribution. Anonymous requests are capped at 15 per second with a burst of 30 before a 429 kicks in, comfortably enough for the dashboards and research tools that already build on it.
| Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) | UK Police | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | None |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Formats | JSON, XML | JSON |
| CORS | no | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
UK Police supports CORS, while Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) doesn't — pick UK Police for direct browser calls.