14 DAY TRIAL // Internet Explorer 8 continues to be the best in breed browser when it comes down to offering end users security compared to rivals that, without exception, are considered to be more secure than IE by default in the public’s perception. It’s not the first time that IE8’s superiority over browsers such as Firefox, Chrome and Opera has been attested, for the protection that the browsers offer end users against socially engineered malicious code. According to NSS Labs, Internet Explorer 8 is capable of blocking at least approximately three times more malware than any of its rivals.
“Windows Internet Explorer 8 caught 85% of the live threats, an exceptional score which surpassed the next best browser (Apple Safari 4) by a 56% margin. Internet Explorer 8 improved 4% between the Q3 2009 and Q1 2010 tests, maintaining its leadership,” NSS Labs reveals. IE8 blocked 81% of all socially engineered malware in the last quarter of 2009, and 69% in Q1 2009. The percentage growth of course reflects the evolution of the browser itself in terms of the security it is capable of offering users.
IE8 comes with the SmartScreen Filter, a security feature designed to protect customers from web-based attacks. According to statistics from Microsoft, no less than one in 250 downloads is malicious code, and the end user has been tricked into downloading malicious code and infecting the computer. Eric Lawrence, IE program manager, offered an insight into the work that made IE8 the best choice for staying safe while online against socially engineered malware.
“Since we launched IE8 in March 2009, SmartScreen has blocked over 560 million attempts to download malware, recently averaging over 3 million blocks per day! Hosted in datacenters around the world, SmartScreen’s URL Reputation Service (URS) has evaluated over 250 billion URLs to help keep IE8 users safe from malware. Even more impressively, since IE7’s Phishing Filter was introduced in 2005, the URS has processed over 5.7 trillion requests to block malicious web sites. Every day, Microsoft receives around 300 million telemetry reports from IE8 users and processes 4.1 billion URLs looking for malicious websites and files. On the back end, our systems and analysts evaluate over 1 terabyte of binaries every day to help identify sites delivering malware,” Lawrence stated.
Google Chrome 4, Mozilla Firefox 3.5, Opera 10 and Apple Safari 4 were all bested by Internet Explorer 8, according to NSS Labs. However, Microsoft underlines that IE6 and IE7 deliver no protection against socially engineered malware, and stresses that users of older versions of Internet Explorer should consider upgrading to IE8 as soon as possible. “Apple Safari 4 caught 29% of live threats, far fewer than Internet Explorer 8,” NSS Labs added. “Overall protection improved greatly from Q3 2009, with Safari providing 0.2% greater protection than Mozilla Firefox 3.5 in the current test. Mozilla Firefox 3.5 caught 29% of live threats to put it in a statistical tie with Safari 4. Both Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4 achieved this protection while utilizing the Google Safe Browsing API. Google Chrome 4 caught 17% of live threats, up 9% from the Q3 2009 test. Opera 10 caught less than 1% of the live threats, providing virtually no protection against socially-engineered malware.”
Firefox 3.6 Final for Windows is available for download here.
Google Chrome 4.0 Stable is available for download here.
Opera 10.50 is available for download here.
Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RTW is available for download here (for 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008).
