Security and reliability issues are rarely considered at the initial stages of software development and are not part of the standard procedures in development of software and services. Security patterns are a recent development as a way to encapsulate the accumulated knowledge about secure systems design, and security patterns are also intended to be used and understood by developers who are not security professionals. In this paper, we compare several security patterns to be used when dealing with application security, following an approach that we consider important for measuring the security degree of the patterns, and indicating a fulfilment or not of the properties and attributes common to all security systems.