Is Your Browser Secure Enough to Meet Your Business Needs?
Businesses today are facing a far greater range of sophisticated and frequent cyber attacks against their networks than ever before. The prevalence of such attacks and the stakes for affected businesses are much higher than ever before. The consequences of a corporate network being infiltrated can be devastating. They can result in both massive losses of revenue and significant damage to a business’ reputation. It is this reputational damage that causes the greatest concern. While money can be recovered, the damage to a business’ reputation following a major security oversight is much harder to bring under control.
Any time your corporate network or its user makes contact with an external network or entity, they need to connect to one another to allow data exchange. Chances are, regardless of the precise business or industry you work in, your employees are going use internet browsers on a regular basis. Whether these are used to browse the internet during downtime, look up information relevant to their duties, or access the networks of other friendly businesses, they represent potential weaknesses in your network’s defence.
What Is Browser Security?
Everyone has their favorite web browser. For many of us, our favorite browser is simply the default one that we have always used on our smartphone or computer.
Given how we use web browsers, it’s easy to assume that they are all the same. And that the real deciding factor between them is down to personal preference. Regardless of the web browser we use, most of us use it for social media, Google, shopping, and other relatively mundane tasks.
When we talk about browser security, we mostly refer to the browser’s ability to receive, fulfill, and return user requests without giving anyone else a chance to snoop on them. We also rely on browsers to store passwords and other sensitive information that we don’t want to fall into the wrong hands.
Do we need particularly good security for all of this? The answer is an emphatic and resounding “yes!”
Choosing the Right Browser
The choice of internet browsers used to be limited to just one or two possibilities. The lack of alternative browsers allowed the position of Internet Explorer to become entrenched. If 80% of internet users are using the same browser, an attacker who knows an exploit for it can hit 80% of all internet users.
It is, therefore, vital that businesses carefully consider their choice of web browsers. Also, that they make sure their employees understand the potential security risks of being careless with their online tools and activities. Educating your staff on which browsers are best for which situations will ensure the best of all worlds.
Privacy
Personal internet browsing at work doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact, many people find that they can produce their best work when they have a little downtime to unwind and take the edge off their day a bit. However, even when the websites we visit aren’t trying to harvest our data and information, the browsers themselves are often complicit!
The best privacy-focused browsers are Firefox Focus and Ghostery. Both allow you to see which hackers have been caught trying to track your browsing (other than what is necessary) and so are very useful in determining who you can trust.
Ensuring Security
Educating your employees about the most common ways that browser security flaws are exploited is the most effective way of ensuring that they stay secure. Every business should have its own set of best practices for employees to follow.
Cybersecurity is an even more pressing concern for a business than it is for an individual. This is because an attacker who gains access to the right part of your business network has the potential to then completely destroy your business or large parts of it. Someone who infiltrates your home network may well discover embarrassing or otherwise personal information, but it is unlikely that they will literally destroy your lifeblood.
VPN
A VPN is a piece of software that can either be installed on individual devices or the router for a whole network. A VPN will encrypt your web traffic, preventing other people from spying on it, while also disguising your physical IP address and making you very difficult to trace.
Using a VPN will improve the overall security of any corporate network by giving the owner much greater control over security protocols. You can install a VPN on any device, a router, a laptop, or a smartphone, so you can keep all your business’s devices secure.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +388,456 people.
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