Internet Explorer – the best browser for protection against socially engineered malware

Here at Microsoft Australia we continue to see cyber attacks that rely on distributing socially engineered malware through phishing emails and websites, which is why it was great to see the news that Internet Explorer is the best browser to help protect users against these threats.

This month in the US, NSS Labs, an independent information security research and testing organisation, released the results of a comparative report reviewing browser protection against socially engineered malware. This study was commissioned by Microsoft with the main intention of the test was to independently measure the protection afforded by IE’s Smart Screen URL filter against its competitors.

The results revealed that Internet Explorer is the industry leader in protecting users against malware with Internet Explorer 9 blocking an outstanding 99 percent and Internet Explorer 8 blocking 90 percent.  Internet Explorer blocks almost 5 times more malware threats than Firefox, 9 times more malware threats than Safari and 33 times more malware threats than Chrome, and has blocked over 1.2 billion malware and fishing attacks. NSS labs used the most current versions of each browser that were available at the time of testing.

If you are still using an older version of Internet Explorer, make sure you upgrade to IE8 or IE9 beta to ensure you are benefitting from the enhanced security features.

Stuart Strathdee, Chief Security Advisor