Security · head-to-head

Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) vs UK Police

Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC)

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.

UK Police

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
AuthenticationNoneNone
Pricingfreefree
FormatsJSON, XMLJSON
CORSnoyes
HTTPSYesYes

UK Police supports CORS, while Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) doesn't — pick UK Police for direct browser calls.

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