Consumers generally access all content from the Internet, where the default security assumption should be that content is untrusted and barriers should be provided to protect the user’s system. Therefore most modern web browsers default to security settings that are appropriate for Internet. If browsers were only used for the Internet, one group of settings would make sense for everything. But this is often not the case for users on their employer’s private intranet.
The concept of Security Zones, which is unique to Internet Explorer, is based on the premise that not all content is created equally. More importantly, not all content should be viewed with the same security settings. The business environment is quite different from the consumer use case, where employees have access to internal business systems, not to mention externally hosted partner systems (Extranets). Some content (e.g., internal line of business applications) may require more advanced/relaxed security access to the local system in order to function properly. Without Security Zones to enable lower security settings for trusted networks, users would need to open their systems to potentially endless Internet attacks just to make certain business applications work as required.
Browsium Catalyst was designed to enable the deployment of multiple browsers within a business environment by ensuring IT has centralized control over which browser is used for which web application on each PC in the organization. Many organizations want to use Internet Explorer for internal, line of business applications and another browser (such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox) for external, Internet use. Catalyst makes this very easy, even though only Internet Explorer was designed to be ‘Zone aware’.
Read our new Knowledge Base article to learn more about Security Zones, along with guidance to ensure proper use of Security Zones in Catalyst to direct users to the required target browser.
