The Browser Wars Continue–a 2013 update

We’ve been watching this for a few years, and the results have been pretty consistent, with the notable exception of Firefox, which took a nosedive in 2012. Aside from that, Internet Explorer has been consistently high, Safari and Opera have been consistently low, and Google Chrome has been bouncing around in the middle when it comes to browser security.

The update for 2013 has a couple of interesting aspects:

1. Internet Explorer is still on top.
2. Firefox has not regained its footing – it continues to perform nearly as poorly as Safari and Opera.
3. Chrome has come a long way toward making itself more consistently secure.

From a computer user point of view, this means two things:

1. On Windows machines, use Internet Explorer.
2. On Apple machines, or if you use a mix of Mac and Windows machines, Google Chrome has surpassed Firefox as the secure browser of choice if you want a single browser across both platforms.

Here’s the summary for Phishing prevention:

Here’s the summary for socially engineered malware blocking:

Here are the references:

https://www.nsslabs.com/reports/2012-browser-security-comparative-analysis-phishing-protection

and

https://www.nsslabs.com/reports/2013-browser-security-comparative-analysis-socially-engineered-malware