Microsoft's Internet Explorer currently owns the lion share of the browser market, but its domination has been continuously eroded by the increasing adoption of Mozilla's Firefox. Researchers with the SANS Institute revealed that Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7 are on equal terms when it comes to the perception of security.

For the end-consumers that are highly concerned with security, Firefox 2.0 is a viable alternative, if not a preferred one to Internet Explorer 7. "Security people are overall more aware of the flaws in Explorer and more likely to play with other browsers," explained Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer at the SANS Institute and chief technology officer for the Internet Storm Center. "More common users might not feel comfortable trying out something new. Not as confident."

Swa Frantzen, also with the Internet Storm Center, compared the adoption rate of Internet Explorer 7 on two different target audiences: those concerned about a high level of security and the general population. What he found is that for security minded people, Firefox 2.0, and any edition of Firefox for that matter, is just as much of a choice as Internet Explorer 7.

"Firefox versions are about as popular in the security minded population as IE versions. These values hardly changed at all over the past 12 months, there's a very slight downward trend, but it's so small that it'd need serious thoughts from a statistical perspective before drawing any conclusions," Frantzen disclosed.

According to the conclusions presented, IE7 has managed to retain the bad security reputation of the previous versions of Microsoft's browser. As far as user perception is concerned, the security delivered by Firefox goes head-to-head with Internet Explorer 7. Frantzen also noted that users that are more concerned with security have made the jump to Internet Explorer 7 before the Redmond Company began pushing the browser as an update to the general population.