Back in August, I wrote a blog post about how Internet Explorer 8 offers the best protection against socially engineered malware threats. This week, NSS Labs released a new study that continues to show Internet Explorer 8 to be the #1 browser in blocking malware! When the first study was revealed, the Internet Explorer Team announced that Internet Explorer 8’s SmartScreen Filter had provided over 80 million blocks of malware. Almost a year after Internet Explorer 8 shipped, Internet Explorer 8’s SmartScreen Filter has provided over 560 million blocks of malware – averaging over 3 million blocks per day! Wow.
The SmartScreen Filter uses a special URL Reputation Service (URS) with data centers hosted around the world and has evaluated over 250 billion URLs to help keep Internet Explorer 8 users safe! Every day, the SmartScreen Filter URS processes about 4.1 billion URLs looking for malicious websites and files; and since it was first introduced in Internet Explorer 7, the URS has processed over 5.7 trillion requests!
Malware is the biggest and most common security threat facing people browsing the Internet today, and Microsoft is investing heavily in keeping people protected while using Internet Explorer with features like the SmartScreen Filter, Protected Mode, DEP, and more. Check out this post on the IEBlog for more info about the NSS Labs study and how to make sure the SmartScreen Filter is turned on. If you’re not already running Internet Explorer 8, or haven’t upgraded, this is a great reason!