For Security Pros, Firefox Goes Head-To-Head With Microsoft's IE7For Security Pros, Firefox Goes Head-To-Head With Microsoft's IE7

Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser may have the lion's share of the general market, but when it comes to security professionals, Mozilla's Firefox open source browser is an even contender, according to a security survey released Monday.

Security-minded people also were quicker to try out Internet Explorer version 7, researchers with the SANS Institute found, though it didn't appear to sway Firefox fans, and the general public quickly is catching up in IE7 adoption.

"Security people are overall more aware of the flaws in Explorer and more likely to play with other browsers," says Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer at the SANS Institute and chief technology officer for the Internet Storm Center. "More common users might not feel comfortable trying out something new. Not as confident."

Swa Frantzen, a handler at the Internet Storm Center, a cooperative cyberthreat monitoring and alert system under the SANS Institute's umbrella, surveyed the browsers that accessed the Storm Center's own Web site and compared the data to the browsers that accessed a general travel Web site. Frantzen figured that the Storm Center's site, by the very nature of it, would draw security-minded people and the second site would draw more of the general public.

While IE generally garners about 79% of the browser market, Firefox is just as popular as IE when it comes to security types, the survey shows. Frantzen's survey also shows that that 50/50 stat has held pretty steady over the past six months.

"It isn't that Firefox is really more secure per say, but [Mozilla is] typically patched faster," says Ullrich.

Numbers came out last month showing that Firefox, in all its versions, has been downloaded more than 300 million times since its initial release on Nov. 9, 2004, but last month for the first time in more than year, it lost market share. In January, Firefox saw its share of the browser market drop to 13.67% from 14% in December, according to Web metrics vendor Net Applications. During this same period, Microsoft Internet Explorer reversed a year of consistent decline, to reach 79.75% market share, a gain of 0.11 percentage points from the previous month.

And when it comes to IE7 adoption, Frantzen found that security types were much quicker to download it and try it out. That adoption rate has started to level out, though, and now the general public is catching up with IE7 adoptions. "I've been looking at the evolution in IE 7's adoption since it got released and subsequently put on automatic updates with great anticipation as it would allow me to stop supporting IE 6's bugs when dealing with CSS," writes Frantzen on the site. "Security minded visitors seemed to have upgraded their browsers much before the release of IE 7, and had a head start in adoption rates."

Ullrich says security people adopted IE7 faster because they're more willing to try it out something new. "I think they stick with Firefox once they like it, though," he adds. "Firefox has these security plug-ins that people like a lot. One allows you to turn on and off JavaScript and another one tells you about the security of a Web site. People like them a lot."