Browser Security News

Although I strongly oppose censorship of any kind, the sad reality is that allowing employees to freely surf the Internet is a really bad idea. Casual surfing can lead to malware infections, litigation and increased support costs. As such, it is probably a good idea to put some controls in place to help limit what your users can access over the Internet. In this article, I will discuss some of the risks associated with casual Internet surfing and offer some suggestions on how you can avoid such risks.

Understanding the risks

Without a doubt malware infections are the biggest threat from casual Internet surfing. I don’t know of a single person (IT professionals included) who has never accidentally stumbled onto a malicious Web page and received a spyware infection as a result.

[tag]Antispyware[/tag] and better security patches have reduced the impact of some types of malware, but other types of malware can pose a threat to security. For example, keystroke loggers are capable of stealing passwords, account numbers and other sensitive information. Even [tag]malware[/tag] that is mostly regarded as a nuisance, such as the type that hijacks a user’s home page or floods his screen with pop-ups, is still a problem for businesses because it reduces the user’s productivity and ties up the technical support staff. Controlling Web surfing with Content Advisor