14 DAY TRIAL // Internet Explorer 11 is Microsoft’s latest player in the browser market, with the new version now available on both Windows 8.1 and Windows 7.
Of course, Microsoft uses every single occasion to talk big about this browser, so it now says that IE11 manages to make 40 percent of the web a lot more secure.
While such a statement would make some people laugh, Redmond says that it’s all possible because IE11 is the first browser that doesn’t rely so much on old ciphersuites, such as RC4. In addition, it comes with TLS 1.2 by default, which is said to be one of the most secure standards available at this point.
“The changes in IE11 increase security while still ensuring compatibility with the Web, in spite of the current widespread use of the RC4 cipher suite. IE11 does not offer RC4-based cipher suites during the initial TLS/SSL handshake. In this way, most connections successfully use non-RC4 cipher suites,” Microsoft explained.
The company then goes on to explain that it analyzed no less than 5 million Internet settings to determine that 96 percent of them also support other chippers than RC4. That’s where IE11 comes into play.
“Notably, nearly 39% of these sites support non-RC4 even though they prefer RC4 – and for these, sites, IE11 substantially increases the security of the Web,” Microsoft explained.
“For the rare cases where the browser cannot negotiate a non-RC4 cipher suite with the server, IE11 falls back to negotiating TLS 1.0 or SSL 3.0 with RC4 to ensure that you can still reach the sites you need. Microsoft is actively working with many of these sites to enable support for non-RC4 cipher suites.”
Internet Explorer 11 is currently the default browser in Windows 8.1 and available as an optional download for Windows 7 users.
If you’re already running Windows 7, go ahead and download Internet Explorer 11 and check out our in-depth review of the recently-launched browser.