TLDR: A demo speaks louder than a thousand words. You can connect to a secure browser created by me and my team via browserling.com/browse. We run secure browsers on our remote servers and stream just the browser window to you as a video.
Secure Browser – What Is It?
A secure browser is a web browser that isolates browsing activities from the local computer and network by running in a sandboxed environment (such as a virtual machine) on a remote server. This approach mitigates risks associated with web-based threats, such as phishing, malware infiltration, and drive-by downloads, by ensuring any malicious content is contained within the virtual machine and cannot compromise the user's local system. It enables safe investigation of suspicious links and downloads, crucial for threat analysis and digital forensics within an organization's security operations.
Secure Browser – How Does It Work?
A secure browser operates by initializing a new virtual machine (VM) or a Docker container for each browsing session. The isolated environment is hosted on a cloud or dedicated server and the sessions are isolated from the user's local machine and network. This approach ensures that any malicious activity is confined to the temporary VM (or Docker container), which is destroyed upon session termination, effectively halting all processes and deleting any files or potential threats encountered during the session. This mechanism provides robust security and privacy, preventing malware from persisting or leaking across sessions.
What's the Difference Between a Regular Browser and a Secure Browser?
A regular browser executes directly on the user's device, interfacing with the Internet while relying on the device's local security measures, which exposes the system to web-based threats. In contrast, a secure browser operates within a remote, isolated environment (a virtual machine or a container), shielding the user's device from direct exposure to malicious content and attacks by sandboxing all activity. This architecture significantly enhances security by containing threats within the virtual environment, preventing any potential compromise of the user's local system.
What Are Secure Browser Use Cases?
Malware Analysis
Secure browsers allow cybersecurity professionals to safely visit and analyze websites suspected of hosting malware, enabling detailed examination without risking their own network.
Phishing Investigations
Cybersecurity professionals use secure browsers to open suspicious emails and links in an isolated environment, assessing their legitimacy without exposing their system to potential threats.
Secure Web Access
Organizations operating in high-security domains use secure browsers to provide employees with web access, minimizing the risk of data breaches through web-based attacks.
Web Testing
Web developers and QA engineers use secure browsers to test web applications across different browser types and versions in isolated environments, ensuring each test is performed in a clean state without previous cookies, cache, or history influencing the results.
Private Browsing
Users can employ secure browsers for sensitive research or browsing activities, ensuring their privacy and anonymity, especially when accessing Tor links.
What Is Browserling?
Browserling is a virtual browser platform that specializes in secure browsing and cross-browser testing, providing developers, QA engineers, and cybersecurity professionals with access to hundreds of browser versions within a cloud-based, isolated environment. It enables thorough testing of web applications for compatibility and performance issues across different browsers, while also offering secure, sandboxed browsers for safe investigation of web threats and vulnerabilities. This dual functionality serves both web development and cybersecurity needs, enabling seamless application testing and secure web threat investigation.
Who Uses Browserling?
Browserling has now become the secure browser platform of choice for cybersecurity experts and web developers, and it's used by hundreds of thousands of users around the world every month. Browserling's customers include governments, states, cities, banks, stock exchanges, universities, newspapers, Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies, and private multi-billion dollar companies.
Happy browsing!