homepage
Open menu
Go one level top
  • Train and Certify
    Train and Certify

    Immediately apply the skills and techniques learned in SANS courses, ranges, and summits

    • Overview
    • Courses
      • Overview
      • Full Course List
      • By Focus Areas
        • Cloud Security
        • Cyber Defense
        • Cybersecurity and IT Essentials
        • DFIR
        • Industrial Control Systems
        • Offensive Operations
        • Management, Legal, and Audit
      • By Skill Levels
        • New to Cyber
        • Essentials
        • Advanced
        • Expert
      • Training Formats
        • OnDemand
        • In-Person
        • Live Online
      • Course Demos
    • Training Roadmaps
      • Skills Roadmap
      • Focus Area Job Roles
        • Cyber Defence Job Roles
        • Offensive Operations Job Roles
        • DFIR Job Roles
        • Cloud Job Roles
        • ICS Job Roles
        • Leadership Job Roles
      • NICE Framework
        • Security Provisionals
        • Operate and Maintain
        • Oversee and Govern
        • Protect and Defend
        • Analyze
        • Collect and Operate
        • Investigate
        • Industrial Control Systems
    • GIAC Certifications
    • Training Events & Summits
      • Events Overview
      • Event Locations
        • Asia
        • Australia & New Zealand
        • Latin America
        • Mainland Europe
        • Middle East & Africa
        • Scandinavia
        • United Kingdom & Ireland
        • United States & Canada
      • Summits
    • OnDemand
    • Get Started in Cyber
      • Overview
      • Degree and Certificate Programs
      • Scholarships
    • Cyber Ranges
  • Manage Your Team
    Manage Your Team

    Build a world-class cyber team with our workforce development programs

    • Overview
    • Why Work with SANS
    • Group Purchasing
    • Build Your Team
      • Team Development
      • Assessments
      • Private Training
      • Hire Cyber Professionals
      • By Industry
        • Health Care
        • Industrial Control Systems Security
        • Military
    • Leadership Training
  • Security Awareness
    Security Awareness

    Increase your staff’s cyber awareness, help them change their behaviors, and reduce your organizational risk

    • Overview
    • Products & Services
      • Security Awareness Training
        • EndUser Training
        • Phishing Platform
      • Specialized
        • Developer Training
        • ICS Engineer Training
        • NERC CIP Training
        • IT Administrator
      • Risk Assessments
        • Knowledge Assessment
        • Culture Assessment
        • Behavioral Risk Assessment
    • OUCH! Newsletter
    • Career Development
      • Overview
      • Training & Courses
      • Professional Credential
    • Blog
    • Partners
    • Reports & Case Studies
  • Resources
    Resources

    Enhance your skills with access to thousands of free resources, 150+ instructor-developed tools, and the latest cybersecurity news and analysis

    • Overview
    • Webcasts
    • Free Cybersecurity Events
      • Free Events Overview
      • Summits
      • Solutions Forums
      • Community Nights
    • Content
      • Newsletters
        • NewsBites
        • @RISK
        • OUCH! Newsletter
      • Blog
      • Podcasts
      • Summit Presentations
      • Posters & Cheat Sheets
    • Research
      • White Papers
      • Security Policies
    • Tools
    • Focus Areas
      • Cyber Defense
      • Cloud Security
      • Digital Forensics & Incident Response
      • Industrial Control Systems
      • Cyber Security Leadership
      • Offensive Operations
  • Get Involved
    Get Involved

    Help keep the cyber community one step ahead of threats. Join the SANS community or begin your journey of becoming a SANS Certified Instructor today.

    • Overview
    • Join the Community
    • Work Study
    • Teach for SANS
    • CISO Network
    • Partnerships
    • Sponsorship Opportunities
  • About
    About

    Learn more about how SANS empowers and educates current and future cybersecurity practitioners with knowledge and skills

    • SANS
      • Overview
      • Our Founder
      • Awards
    • Instructors
      • Our Instructors
      • Full Instructor List
    • Mission
      • Our Mission
      • Diversity
      • Scholarships
    • Contact
      • Contact Customer Service
      • Contact Sales
      • Press & Media Enquiries
    • Frequent Asked Questions
    • Customer Reviews
    • Press
    • Careers
  • Contact Sales
  • SANS Sites
    • GIAC Security Certifications
    • Internet Storm Center
    • SANS Technology Institute
    • Security Awareness Training
  • Search
  • Log In
  • Join
    • Account Dashboard
    • Log Out
  1. Home >
  2. Blog >
  3. When patching browsers is harassing you, isolate your browser
Rajiv Raghunarayan

When patching browsers is harassing you, isolate your browser

December 16, 2020

60% of breaches in 2019 involved unpatched software vulnerabilities.[i] With the pandemic, the problem of unpatched applications worsened as work from anywhere (WFA) became widespread. Patch management is a tedious security task that gets in the way of securing organizations. Automated patch management products require an agent on the endpoint, making it hard to determine whether the latest patches are applied to every system. And all patches aren’t free from gaps. Worse! Even after patching, zero-day vulnerabilities remain.

Among the most perilous applications are unpatched browsers that threat actors use to enter your system surreptitiously. But regularly patching and updating browsers gets complicated as users may not comply with corporate security measures when WFA.

Why hackers love unpatched browsers

The increase in cyberattacks on PC networks and routers since COVID-19 can be linked to unpatched browsers.[ii] Vulnerabilities in stale browser versions of Chrome, Edge, Safari, Opera, Firefox, and others remain the most common attack method used by threat actors. It only gets worse when users take it upon themselves to get their work done on an unmanaged machine. All they need is a browser, but it may be IE running on an outdated home machine that can’t be patched and is shared with others in their household. Forrester reports that application vulnerabilities will continue to be the most common external attack approach to carry out breaches and compromise systems.[iii]

Perfect patch management is a distant dream

Rampant shadow IT complicates the process of keeping browsers up-to-date. How do you patch a browser if you don’t know it’s installed or what patches are needed? [iv] With multiple browsers running on one machine, perfect patch management remains wishful thinking. When users have to use IE for legacy web applications but forget to switch to Chrome for other browsing, it increases risk since Microsoft has stopped patching IE. Or what if the user prefers Firefox but IT doesn’t support it?

Older versions of operating systems with built-in browsers (IE on Windows 98, XP, 7), especially in IoT environments, keep doors open for threats. This may be relatively safer within the corporate network but riskier in WFA environments where users may bypass corporate security measures, thus, paving the ground for attacks on known but unpatched vulnerabilities.

Remote browser isolation to secure unpatched browsers

While unpatched browsers are a security risk, patched ones may still have zero-days. Remote browser isolation (RBI) is effective not only against zero-days but against any web-based threat. Built using the Zero Trust approach, RBI fetches, executes, and renders all elements of a page away from the user’s device and effectively protects against ransomware, phishing, social-engineering attacks, and malvertising. RBI is critical to any organization’s cybersecurity program since almost all work performed today requires using the browser, according to a SANS report[JK1] .[v] Especially with WFA models and heavy reliance on the cloud, SANS also labels the browser as the new endpoint.

Our intent is not to undermine the importance of patch management. Patch management is and will be a critical part of the vulnerability management lifecycle that organizations can’t afford to neglect. Organizations can, however, reduce the scope of patching from multiple versions of different browsers on multiple operating systems to a single remote browser by adopting RBI. Taking this approach means that routine maintenance and emergency patching is provided by the remote browser isolation vendor in the process, while reducing the attack surface of the local browsers which become a low risk HTML5 canvas for painting a secure pixel stream from the secure remote browser.

Rajiv Raghunarayan is the Senior Vice President of Products and Marketing at Cyberinc and heads the product management, marketing and strategic alliances functions. Rajiv has more than two decades of experience in technology and marketing leadership positions at companies such as SentinelOne, FireEye and Cisco. His past experience includes areas of network security, email security, endpoint security, network management and WAN optimization. He holds a master's degree in software systems from Birla Institute of Technology, Pilani, and an MBA from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

[i] “Costs and Consequences of Gaps in Vulnerability Response” by Ponemon Institute for ServiceNow: https://www.servicenow.com/lpayr/ponemon-vulnerability-survey.html

[ii] CERT-In report: https://ciso.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/covid-19-cert-in-says-spurt-in-cyberattacks-on-personal-comps-since-work-from-home-protocol-began/74857200

[iii] Forresters’s recent State of Application Security Report, https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-whitesource/forresters-state-of-application-security-2020-key-takeaways

[iv] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/...

[v] All Roads Lead to the Browser: A SANS Buyer's Guide to Browser Isolation https://marketing.cyberinc.com/rs/407-WDX-307/images/A_SANS_Buyers_Guide_to_Browser_Isolation.pdf

[JK1]Link to https://marketing.cyberinc.com/rs/407-WDX-307/images/A_SANS_Buyers_Guide_to_Browser_Isolation.pdf

Share:
TwitterLinkedInFacebook
Copy url Url was copied to clipboard
Subscribe to SANS Newsletters
Receive curated news, vulnerabilities, & security awareness tips
United States
Canada
United Kingdom
Spain
Belgium
Denmark
Norway
Netherlands
Australia
India
Japan
Singapore
Afghanistan
Aland Islands
Albania
Algeria
American Samoa
Andorra
Angola
Anguilla
Antarctica
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Aruba
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belize
Benin
Bermuda
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba
Bosnia And Herzegovina
Botswana
Bouvet Island
Brazil
British Indian Ocean Territory
Brunei Darussalam
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Cape Verde
Cayman Islands
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Christmas Island
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Colombia
Comoros
Cook Islands
Costa Rica
Croatia (Local Name: Hrvatska)
Curacao
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
East Timor
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
Faroe Islands
Fiji
Finland
France
French Guiana
French Polynesia
French Southern Territories
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Gibraltar
Greece
Greenland
Grenada
Guadeloupe
Guam
Guatemala
Guernsey
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Heard And McDonald Islands
Honduras
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Iraq
Ireland
Isle of Man
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Jersey
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Korea, Republic Of
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Lao People's Democratic Republic
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macau
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Martinique
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mayotte
Mexico
Micronesia, Federated States Of
Moldova, Republic Of
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Montserrat
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands Antilles
New Caledonia
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Niue
Norfolk Island
Northern Mariana Islands
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Palestine
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Pitcairn
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Reunion
Romania
Russian Federation
Rwanda
Saint Bartholemy
Saint Kitts And Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Martin
Saint Vincent And The Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome And Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Sint Maarten
Slovakia
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
South Africa
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
South Sudan
Sri Lanka
St. Helena
St. Pierre And Miquelon
Suriname
Svalbard And Jan Mayen Islands
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tokelau
Tonga
Trinidad And Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Turks And Caicos Islands
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United States Minor Outlying Islands
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Vatican City
Venezuela
Vietnam
Virgin Islands (British)
Virgin Islands (U.S.)
Wallis And Futuna Islands
Western Sahara
Yemen
Yugoslavia
Zambia
Zimbabwe

By providing this information, you agree to the processing of your personal data by SANS as described in our Privacy Policy.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Recommended Training

  • SEC560: Enterprise Penetration Testing
  • SEC450: Blue Team Fundamentals: Security Operations and Analysis
  • FOR518: Mac and iOS Forensic Analysis and Incident Response

Tags:
  • Cybersecurity Insights

Related Content

Blog
Cybersecurity Insights
January 16, 2023
The 17 Best Cybersecurity Podcasts
A list of cybersecurity-related podcasts.
370x370-person-placeholder.png
Emily Neuens
read more
Blog
Special_Broadcast_ChatGPT.png
Cybersecurity Insights
December 21, 2022
Q&A From SANS Special Broadcast: What You Need to Know About OpenAI's New ChatGPT Bot - and How it Affects Your Security
We had an influx of questions come in during our ChatGPT Special Broadcast on Wednesday, December 21. Here were those questions — and our responses.
370x370-person-placeholder.png
Emily Blades
read more
Blog
Blueprint_Podcast_-_Blog_-_Top_5_Blueprint_Podcast_Episodes_of_2022_-_340x340.jpg
Cyber Defense, Cybersecurity Insights
December 12, 2022
Top 5 Blueprint Podcast Episodes of 2022
This year Blueprint Podcast published 14 episodes with experts from across the cybersecurity industry. Here were the top-rated episodes of the year.
370x370-person-placeholder.png
Emily Neuens
read more
  • Register to Learn
  • Courses
  • Certifications
  • Degree Programs
  • Cyber Ranges
  • Job Tools
  • Security Policy Project
  • Posters & Cheat Sheets
  • White Papers
  • Focus Areas
  • Cyber Defense
  • Cloud Security
  • Cybersecurity Leadership
  • Digital Forensics
  • Industrial Control Systems
  • Offensive Operations
Subscribe to SANS Newsletters
Receive curated news, vulnerabilities, & security awareness tips
United States
Canada
United Kingdom
Spain
Belgium
Denmark
Norway
Netherlands
Australia
India
Japan
Singapore
Afghanistan
Aland Islands
Albania
Algeria
American Samoa
Andorra
Angola
Anguilla
Antarctica
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Aruba
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belize
Benin
Bermuda
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba
Bosnia And Herzegovina
Botswana
Bouvet Island
Brazil
British Indian Ocean Territory
Brunei Darussalam
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Cape Verde
Cayman Islands
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Christmas Island
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Colombia
Comoros
Cook Islands
Costa Rica
Croatia (Local Name: Hrvatska)
Curacao
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
East Timor
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
Faroe Islands
Fiji
Finland
France
French Guiana
French Polynesia
French Southern Territories
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Gibraltar
Greece
Greenland
Grenada
Guadeloupe
Guam
Guatemala
Guernsey
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Heard And McDonald Islands
Honduras
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Iraq
Ireland
Isle of Man
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Jersey
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Korea, Republic Of
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Lao People's Democratic Republic
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macau
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Martinique
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mayotte
Mexico
Micronesia, Federated States Of
Moldova, Republic Of
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Montserrat
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands Antilles
New Caledonia
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Niue
Norfolk Island
Northern Mariana Islands
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Palestine
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Pitcairn
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Reunion
Romania
Russian Federation
Rwanda
Saint Bartholemy
Saint Kitts And Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Martin
Saint Vincent And The Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome And Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Sint Maarten
Slovakia
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
South Africa
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
South Sudan
Sri Lanka
St. Helena
St. Pierre And Miquelon
Suriname
Svalbard And Jan Mayen Islands
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tokelau
Tonga
Trinidad And Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Turks And Caicos Islands
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United States Minor Outlying Islands
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Vatican City
Venezuela
Vietnam
Virgin Islands (British)
Virgin Islands (U.S.)
Wallis And Futuna Islands
Western Sahara
Yemen
Yugoslavia
Zambia
Zimbabwe

By providing this information, you agree to the processing of your personal data by SANS as described in our Privacy Policy.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
  • © 2023 SANS™ Institute
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • Careers
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn