Microsoft Edge is Safer than Chrome and Firefox in Case of a Phishing Attack

By Costea Lestoc On Oct 14, 2017

This week NSS Labs has published two comparative reports on Web Browsers Security and how they are affected by malware or phishing attacks. The reports focus on a lot of browsers and how vulnerable they are or they aren’t to the security threats mentioned above.

The majority of attacks have been focusing on exploiting vulnerabilities in operating systems or in the software of different applications that are frequently used. But developers have increased security and have grown more vigilant, so attackers started exploiting users and getting information from them.

The report shows that the OS is not relevant in this case, and that the browsers are more relevant when it comes to security threats. Browsers should be protecting their users against these attacks by blocking phishing URLs whenever a user tries opening them.

NSS Labs stated that the attacks happen through browsers as they are the main interface that gives users information and it’s the best environment for the attackers. Enterprises have started new strategies concerning their browsers in order to reduce the threats, so NSS Labs provided some insight to help enterprises and users too.

The company tested Microsoft Edge, Google and Mozilla and reached to the conclusion that Microsoft Edge is a lot more secure than its competitors.

The tests were conducted over 23 days and involved accessing 1,136 suspicious URLs from 36,120 instances. The results showed that Microsoft Edge provides a lot more protection, blocking an average of 92.3% phishing URLs, while Chrome reached only 74.6% and Mozilla 61.1%.

The reaction to new phishing URLs is faster on Microsoft Edge, the zero – hour protection rate is 81.8% for Edge, 58.6% for Chrome and 50.7% for Firefox.

While Chrome is very popular with its many features, users should be more concerned about their protection on the internet. Microsoft is working on adding more consistency – through updates and extensions – to their browser, to make it more appealing to users.