Firefox users are safer than IE users
A new study has shown that Firefox users are the most likely to have fully patched browsers and thus be safer online. The 18-month study was conducted by researchers at the Swiss Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, along with IBM and Google.Just over 83 per cent of Firefox users, 65.3 per cent of Safari users, 56.1 per cent of Opera users and 47.6 per cent of Internet Explorer users had fully patched browsers.
Browser patching is becoming increasingly important as the majority of the internet malware currently in circulation enters systems via poorly patched browsers.
The research also found that IE users were the slowest to upgrade their browsers. Nineteen months after the release of IE7 barely half of IE users had upgraded (52.5 per cent) compared to 92.2 per cent of Firefox users.
The researchers recommend that software companies introduce automatic updating of browsers and should time stamp older browsers with a ‘best before’ date similar to the food industry.
The researchers also criticised Microsoft’s monthly Patch Tuesday cycle approach.
“Microsoft’s operating system auto-update functionality encompasses the IE update mechanism even if the browser is not in use,” they said.
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