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Apozy Blog | Insights into privacy, cybersecurity and electric sheep.

Insights into privacy, cybersecurity and electric sheep.

Why choose Native Browser Isolation?

Future-Proofing Cybersecurity After DNS-over-HTTPS

The Dark World of Chrome Extensions - Are you Prepared?

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See B-EDR in action and find out how it can work best for you.

CrowdStrike, Carbon Black, and other EDR solutions can’t access browser information, preventing them from stopping modern attacks or providing any visibility.

Modern browsers prevent problems that propagate from the browser to the OS, by encrypting data and memory. By doing so, EPP and EDR tools can’t retrieve or write data directly to the browser without a third-party. That means there’s a gap in your endpoint protection, which just so happens to be where most people are working, the browser.

By leaving the browser vulnerable, you’re leaving your endpoint devices open to spearphishing, malicious downloads, extension data leaks, malvertising, and there’s no visibility into any of it.

Sandboxing occurs at three layers: Side-Channel Sandbox, Code Execution Sandbox, HTML Sandbox.

The sandbox is a C++ library that allows the creation of sandboxed processes — processes that execute within a very restrictive environment. The only resources sandboxed processes can freely use are CPU cycles and memory. For example, sandboxes processes cannot write to disk or display their own windows. What exactly they can do is controlled by an explicit policy. Chromium renderers are sandboxed processes.

An extension of browser security is the sandboxing of memory and storage from side-channel attacks (ex: installers that would install browser extensions bundled with other software). That sandbox uses an encrypted SQLite database to store browser history and OS default protected memory from external processes scanning memory (if available by hardware/OS).

What does and doesn’t it protect against?

The sandbox stops malicious code running inside the sandbox. Such code cannot install persistent malware in the user‘s account (because writing to the filesystem is banned). Such bugs also cannot read and steal arbitrary files from the user’s machine.

In Chromium, the renderer processes are sandboxed and have this protection. After the NPAPI removal, all remaining plugins are also sandboxed.

The sandbox does not stop bugs in system components such as the kernel it is running on.

If you’re not familiar, Endpoint Protection Platforms(EPP) and Endpoint Detection and Response platforms(EDR) offer a method of protection and data collection for devices.

EDR/EPP solutions are put in place to protect the endpoint entirely but there’s no mitigation for any browser based risk. This leaves a gaping hole in company’s endpoint security goals.

Browser based attacks that go unchecked include:

Malicious browser extensions or data leakage

Phishing, spearphishing, and malvertising

Furthermore, there’s no method of collecting any data around an incident or potentially hazardous activity.

In order to properly protect the browser and complete your endpoint protection plan, you need a Browser-EDR(B-EDR) to provide protection and visibility.

A B-EDR instantly fills the gap left by your EDR with:

Incident data collection with pre-encrypted traffic analysis

Spearphishing & malware download protection

Malvertising safeguards & centrally managed adblock

Browser extension auditing, blocking, and risk information

Airlock deploys in under 60 seconds, reduces risk across all browsing, provides data that is typically unreachable, and increases your endpoint protection effectiveness.

Airlock itself also uses sandboxing. The Native Browser Isolation sandbox is implemented via HTML Sandboxing. This method of sandboxing prevents end users from entering credentials, downloading files, or allowing malicious scripts on dangerous websites.

Try Airlock now, instantly, at https://www.apozy.com.

Protecting your endpoints is critical in any modern security stack. In order to prevent breaches and lateral movement, endpoints must be completely protected. To achieve the goal of layered security, browser protection and visibility must be considered as a standard.

EDR/EPP Fails to Protect Your Browser— Why?

Savvy security folks are aware that determined threat actors and spearphishers can be patient and resourceful in their efforts to breach your organization and defeat your defenses. In the past few years, attacks have moved to the most vulnerable piece of your network - your browser. Email, operating systems, and endpoint software is patched and kept secure while attackers deliver social engineering attacks completely unhindered. 

This failure is often a lack of visibility and little to no protection from malicious websites. Browser Endpoint Detection and Response (B-EDR) is the solution for addressing this challenge. This article offers insight into what B-EDR is, how it works, and why it is a key component of endpoint security. 

What is Browser Endpoint Detection and Response?

B-EDR has one of the most critical security capabilities there is: visibility. Visibility into browsers is traditionally limited, with encryption and browser to OS sandboxes keeping access to data and activity limited.  

To define B-EDR more simply, it records browser activities and events taking place on endpoints and provides security teams with the visibility they need to uncover incidents that would otherwise remain invisible. 

This article is will give you a better understanding of browser endpoint detection and response by explaining where it fits in a security strategy. By the end, you’ll know the benefits of incorporating B-EDR into your security approach. 

What is the difference between B-EDR and a secure web gateway(SWG)? SWGs is the prevention component of endpoint security, which aims to stop threats from entering the browser. When threats slip past an SWG, B-EDR detects that activity and automatically stops the threat before it causes any damage. 

According to Gartner, effective endpoint detection and response must include the following capabilities: 

Alert triage or suspicious activity validation 

Here are the six key aspects of B-EDR you should know and understand: 

Real-time visibility across all your browsers allows you to view malicious activity, even as attacks attempt to breach your environment, and stop them immediately. 

Effective B-EDR requires massive amounts of telemetry and traffic collected from browsers. Data is enriched with context so it can be mined for signs of attack with a variety of analytic techniques, including Visual AI.

Relying solely on scanning services or threat intel leads to the “silent failure” that allows data breaches to occur. Effective B-EDR requires approaches that determine indicators of imposter sites, so you are alerted of suspicious activities at time of click. 

A B-EDR solution that integrates user, browser, extension, and traffic data can provide context, including details on the type of social engineering and information about the attack. 

B-EDR that enables an automatic response to incidents can stop an attack before it becomes a breach and allows your users to get back to work immediately. 

Having a browser extension based B-EDR solution is the only way to ensure zero impact on endpoints, while making ensuring that data is collected unencrypted and attacks are stopped in real-time. Cloud management of the B-EDR is also critical to ensure deployment and management is simple. 

Watch our on-demand webcast to see the role of Native Browser Isolation in the context of B-EDR.

The Airlock B-EDR provides next-gen capabilities that surpass conventional defenses, which leave you open to failure and can allow attackers to deliver spearphishing undetected. The solution lies in having continuous and comprehensive real-time protection and visibility into what is happening within your browsers. Airlock also delivers the ability to apply behavioral analysis and actionable intelligence to stop an incident from turning into a breach.

Apozy B-EDR provides the following critical capabilities: 

Automatically Detects &  Respond to Targeted Attacks

Airlock pairs comprehensive visibility across browsers with Visual AI that analyzes billions of sites in real time to automatically detect suspicious pages. After detection, sites are sandboxed at time of click. 

Understanding the visual branding of sites as part of a broader picture allows Airlock to apply security logic from Visual Artificial Intelligence. If a visited site matches a known brand, the Airlock extension will identify the activity as malicious and automatically sandbox the malicious page using Native Browser Isolation.  

Airlock isolates next-gen threats on the web via Native Browser Isolation. It allows organizations to remain safe while the browser automatically takes swift and instantaneous action by neutering potentially hazardous pages. 

When a page is sandboxed, it can still be viewed and explored, but it will remain contained unless it is unlocked by a user or administrator. 

When it comes to responding to emerging threats, time is of the essence and responders need visibility in depth and in real time, so they can remediate with speed and decisiveness.  Airlock reports sandboxed sites in real-time, providing the enhanced visibility that enables security teams to immediately understand the threats they are dealing with, while creating zero impact on performance. 

Provides Real-Time and Historical Visibility

Airlock acts like a DVR in the browser, recording browsing activity to monitor and report incidents. Browsing activity is recorded pre-encrypted, much like SSL inspection, but without the use of a proxy or gateway. Customers are given comprehensive visibility into everything that is happening on their endpoints’ browsers from a security perspective. Airlock tracks browsing data, extensions, and ads that are blocked. 

This gives security teams the useful information they need, including: 

Browsing data, with full URLs unencrypted. 

Uploads and downloads with destination and source. 

Browser extensions that leak private information from your browser. 

Ads that contain potential malvertising. 

Context with user, device information, and timestamps. 

This complete oversight of security-related browser activity allows security teams to “shoulder surf” on malicious activity in real time. 

Manage and Block Browser Threats Beyond Phishing

Airlock reports on threats that go unseen. Browser extensions frequently have access to most everything on your screen and may report whatever it contains to a cloud service. Often times, these same extensions have no privacy policy, providing no visibility on where your data is going or who owns it.  By delivering complete visibility into browser extensions that may be leaking private information, Airlock allows security teams to block malicious software with one click before it causes damage.  

Malvertising attacks contain phishing that target your organization and bypass 99% of security tools, because they’re embedded in existing, trusted ad networks. These ad networks flood information to your search results and apps you use everyday. The only way to stop malvertising is to use ad block. Airlock is the first of its kind, a centrally managed ad block that is configured from the cloud management console. Instantly apply blocking rules to groups based on risk profiles. 

With Airlock’s cloud-native architecture, lightweight browser extension and unified console, response capabilities can be delivered to any system anywhere in the world with zero impact on cost or performance. 

B-EDR should be a part of your endpoint security strategy, here’s why: 

Reason #1: Prevention alone can’t ensure 100 percent protection 

See Native Browser Isolation in action and find out how it can work best for you.

Browser Isolation is a relatively new technology, growing in popularity in 2019 & 2020, expected to be an even larger part of the security stack in 2021 and beyond, according to Gartner.

The purpose of the technology is to create an “air gap” between the user’s browser and the internet, keeping them safe from online attacks like malicious downloads and phishing.

There are multiple types of isolation but the two most common are remote browser isolation and Native Browser Isolation, that bridges the gaps between Local and Remote Browser Isolation.

Many companies are exploring the technology to fit into their own business, but are confused on what the benefits of each technology are.

Remote VS Native Browser Isolation — Technology Differences


Remote browser isolation creates an air gap by streaming the internet to the end user’s browser, usually from the cloud. The services typically load a page off-site, re-render it, and stream it to the browser. This removes anything malicious embedded in the page like scripts and prevents all downloads — dangerous and safe alike.

There are a few downfalls with this type of solution. Typically, it breaks user experience. Sites that are rendered client-side are unlikely to render correctly in a remote browser isolation solution. Examples of client-side rendered sites are Facebook and YouTube. Remote browser isolation companies have solved this by writing exception lists that don’t re-render those pages, excluding them from any protection or isolation.

Data is also not retrieved from remote browser isolation solutions. They do not collect data for privacy’s sake, but there’s also no way for them to collect browsing or incident data.

The most prolific type of browser-based attacks are phishing and social engineering, which are not covered by remote browser isolation. Some companies use a basic threat intelligence filter list which has been previously verified and is hours or days old, not able to protect against spearphishing or advanced attacks like 2FA bypass or malvertising.

Native Browser Isolation is cloud based and uses technology existing in the browser to create a sandbox that stops malicious sites, downloads, scripts, and ads. Detection for malicious pages is done via visual artificial intelligence and machine learning. Native Browser Isolation reports data similar to SSL inspection proxies but without a gateway or breaking SSL/TLS.

Unlike remote solutions, native isolation does not change user experience, as it makes malicious pages read-only instead of blocking or rewriting them. It removes the need for exception lists and mitigates false positives.

The visual AI component detects malicious pages at time of click, preventing all social engineering and phishing attacks as well.

Additionally, centrally managed adblocking is the only method of preventing malvertising attacks, as deployed within Native Browser Isolation.

Native Browser Isolation was created to fill the gaps found in remote browser isolation. The technology is different because Native isolation does not create an actual air gap. The browsing experience remains the same, but with added protection to create isolation for the web browser.

Remote and Native Browser Isolation have different use cases.

Remote Browser Isolation Use Case A very large financial institution uses remote browser isolation to ensure 80,000 global employees are protected from all downloads that could be malicious. Those employees use endpoints to process information and access cloud applications, meaning they have very little need to download files from the web or visit YouTube. Their user experience when browsing is different than they’re used to, but they are protected against downloads that could infect their machines or network.

Native Browser Isolation Use Case The largest US-based cryptocurrency exchange with 1,500 global employees use Native Browser Isolation to ensure that employees retain the browsing experience they expect while being protected from malicious downloads and targeted spearphishing attacks. Advanced, technology-forward organizations like crypto exchanges need to collect browsing data without breaking a security protocol, so they use native isolation to accomplish that to collect browsing information. They chose Native Browser Isolation to make deployment and management very simple and reduce stress on their team. Click here to find out more about Native Browser Isolation.

Both forms of isolation can be very useful platforms. Deciding which one to use depends on your goals, but there is some overlap between the two platforms.

Use remote browser isolation if you need a physical air gap as part of a compliance or policy requirement. Typically, this would be larger organizations with over 10,000 employees.

Use Native Browser Isolation if you need protection from advanced phishing, incident information, and to keep the user experience of standard browsing intact. This would work best for organizations with 150 to 10,000 employees.

Ultimately both have their purpose. In the author’s opinion, remote browser isolation is a better fit for large, legacy companies and Native Browser Isolation fits the model of a fast-paced growing organizations.

Remote Browser Isolation VS Native Isolation: What’s the difference?

SSL Inspection or HTTPS Inspection breaks SSL encrypted internet communication between the client and the server. The interception is typically done on the server and its purpose is to see “inside” encrypted web traffic. Legacy security applications block millions of SSL encrypted messages that contain advanced threats everyday, so without inspecting it, data around those attacks is limited.

SSL encryption is sophisticated but not perfect. When a client, such as a browser, first sends an HTTPS request to a Web server, it starts a series of message exchanges called the SSL handshake. During the SSL handshake:

The server sends its digital certificate to the client to authenticate itself.

The client and server agree on the SSL protocol version and algorithms to use.

The client and server generate the symmetric keys they will use to encrypt their messages.

While this protects most everyone from cleartext theft and other dangers online via encryption, it also means that dated security tools must break SSL via a method called SSL inspection.

Traditional SSL inspection enables organizations to intercept user HTTPS requests, break the encryption, determine that the server is legitimate, and create a tunnel between the user and the server. This process is hardware intensive, often breaks websites, and makes browsing slow. Most importantly, it destroys a security protocol which has been widely accepted as being one of the most significant ways to increase web security globally.

Cost and performance have been the primary limitation for fully implementing SSL inspection. Concerns about privacy also come up. Obviously, the move to SSL for the entirety of web traffic is not slowing down. Ultimately, these concerns must to be mitigated.

One way to mitigate the concerns of breaking SSL and things like DNS over HTTPS, which will prevent DNS tools from even seeing traffic, is to stop decrypting SSL traffic altogether. In order to do that, you’ll need to move data collection to the browser. Within the browser, an extension has the ability to read and collect data from malicious websites and traffic, enabling the same level of insight gathered from SSL inspection. Those data points are delivered in real-time, enriched with user information but without the slowdowns, heavy cost, and broken pages.

Using an extension like Airlock enables organizations of any size the ability to see traffic “behind” SSL without concern of changes to SSL breaking their existing security tools. Airlock deploys in under a minute to every browser in your organization and immediately begins logging traffic. Employees and users of Airlock will notice no difference in their browsing but administrators will quickly glean the data they’ve been waiting for without any of the caveats.

Using browser-collected data future proofs your security stack and prevents user experience problems. In order to maintain your security posture and enable your security team to keep working when things change, it’s recommended that companies consider moving their “behind” SSL data collection to client-side methods before 2021.

Inspect the Web without Breaking It: SSL Inspection for the Future

Cybersecurity threats have evolved. At one time attacks came through direct email or text messages. Now browsers are the greatest avenue of vulnerability, be it from malware, phishing schemes or most other type of security attack.

The new focus on the browser means cybersecurity experts have to find new and novel ways to protect against attacks. This new innovation in security is browser isolation. Not all kinds of browser isolation offer identical levels of protection, however. In addition, some variations of this technology detract from user experience and leave businesses without data critical to full functioning of their operations.

This blog post is an in-depth assessment of the types of browser isolation. It clearly identifies the advantages of using native browser isolation in cybersecurity strategy.

Browser isolation is exactly what the term implies. It creates a gap between end users, their browsers, and the internet. This helps to prevent attacks from reaching the vulnerable systems of end users.

There are two primary ways to achieve browser isolation. While all achieve some level of protection, it is native browser isolation that comes closest to creating a bubble of protection against the digital world — instead of merely a castle with a few high doors.

In remote browser isolation, the solution streams the internet to the browser of the end user. That browser is cloud-based. This separates the online activity through the browser from the end user’s systems.

This solution is a challenge to maintain. It can detract from the user experience, in particular by blocking access to sites that are safe. This means on-site IT staff must create a list of site exceptions that is continually updated. The maintenance takes time, and costs money in addition to adding to staff frustrations.

On the business intelligence side, it’s notable that remote browser isolation does not collect user data. That may be an advantage privacy-wise. But as companies know, user data is valuable and most organizations want access to that information. Remote browser isolation prevents this.

Perhaps most strikingly, remote browser isolation has specific vulnerabilities when it comes to cyber protection. This solution cannot stop phishing. Guarding against that particular threat comes via a downloaded list of known threats, which of course is always behind what’s actually out there.

Other security threats, in addition to phishing schemes, may also slip past the air gap. In summary, it’s better than current browser security technology, but is less than ideal for security.

Apozy’s solution is Native Browser Isolation. It is cloud-based, but uses technology within the browser to create a sandbox. This means there are no changes to user experience. There is no need to create exception lists. At the same time, there is no risk of clicking on a “bad site,” since Apozy’s proprietary visual intelligence spots those sites and makes the page read-only.

Native Browser Isolation is the only solution that prevents phishing, malvertising, malicious downloads, and all other browser threats in their entirety. In addition, this technology can report data around incidents. It reports data behind SSL, replacing SSL inspection.

An expert recently noted that was sets Apozy apart is not only its efficiency and efficacy, but the fact that it uses the browser’s existing technology. As a result, there is no need for additional hardware or IT staff time to make sure that the browser works the way the end user expects. In fact, the end user should notice virtually no difference between accessing the internet using the Apozy product and using any browser without this technology — except that they won’t be bothered by web attacks.

Want to learn more? Check out Apozy’s Airlock — powered by Native Browser Isolation.

The internet can be a scary place. Most end users don’t give much thought to browsing for information, work related or otherwise. The internet is simply a vehicle and it’s the first place most people go when they need to quickly find what they want. While an employee may be diligently looking at competitors’ websites for an assigned work project, searching for cyber security training to enhance their skills, or ordering new supplies for the office, they may inadvertently stumble upon a malicious site crafted by criminals for the purposes of stealing credentials, delivering malware, or initiating some other form of cyber attack against the user’s employer. In this sense, the device become the vehicle, but for nefarious purposes.

The ephemerality of organizations’ webpages allows crafty criminals take advantage of unsuspecting users and turn harmless web browsing into potential threats. What may look like a legitimate website could easily be an impersonation, with only minor details changed and which are invisible to the naked eye. Or the threat actor may capitalize on a common typing errors and host a malicious website where the only perceptible difference is the URL, which a user could easily typo and end up in the wrong place before noticing anything has gone awry. Without any malintent, when a person hits one of these websites, criminals can scrape all sorts of information, from cookies to the user’s browser history to saved login information.

All of this poses a problem to the user and the user’s employer, especially if the device in use is also accessing company data and systems (which is more often the case than not in today’s work from home economy). This is not a new problem-cyber crime has been around for as long as cyber space has-and in 2013, Rick Deacon and Erhan Justice decided to start a business focused on phishing and cyber security awareness campaigns. Their initial idea was to give companies workforce risk analytics that would simulate phishing campaigns, test employees’ security awareness, score behavior, and inform employers about the state of their workforce’s security readiness.

By 2017, the pair had evolved past their initial product offering and decided to pitch Y Combinator, a startup advisory and funding resource. It was there that Deacon and Erhan decided to scrap their initial idea and built a new product, today known as Apozy.

On a recent call with Deacon, he called Apozy Airlock, the company’s current product, a “browser defense platform” that uses native browser isolation and AI to identify malicious websites and block users from browsing to them. With a 3-petabyte visual database containing nearly 68 billion indexed webpages as the intelligence engine, Airlock analyzes website information for fake pages and impersonations, homing in on everything from slightly adjusted versions of logos, color palettes that are minor gradations away from the original, or altered text sizes or fonts. More obvious visual indicators are also contained within Apozy’s database.

Apozy Airlock is installed as a browser extension which can be centrally pushed to employees and deployed in seconds, without any configuration or infrastructure changes, proxies, or enrollments. Once on the endpoint, whenever an employee browses to a website, Airlock instantly checks the site against the visual database and if the site is deemed malicious or potentially malicious, the site is converted to read-only and the real site is sent to a sandbox where it is further analyzed. This method allows employees to access the data they need without turning their device into a tool for criminal activity.

Deacon told us that Airlock can instantly block malicious extensions, ads, and network requests, and it replaces the SSL inspection proxy and reports all data (including incidents) back to a dashboard which can be integrated with the customer’s SIEM. Airlock can also be used to replace VPNs, which have proven to be problematic, creating latency and bandwidth issues for both employers and employees. Airlock, Deacon said, doesn’t break the user experience and is seamless to the user: “They won’t notice any difference, either in speed or access, from their insecure browsing.”

Based on our short conversation, there seems to be little downside to deploying browser defense via Apozy Airlock. It’s one more layer of security that can keep busy employees safe. One has to wonder, though, why a company like Google wouldn’t already be in this space. The browser isolation, anti-phishing, and endpoint protection markets are crowded, without a doubt, but the key to Apozy’s success appears to be in its visual database that no other company known to TAG Cyber can rival.

Founded by Dr. Edward Amoroso in 2016, New York-based TAG Cyber democratizes cyber security research and advisory services for enterprise professionals around the world. The TAG Cyber Security Annual provides free guidance on the cyber security industry based on fifty+ identified controls. The company also offers expert consulting services, as well as a Cyber Corps platform designed to help students learn the craft of cyber defense.

Katie Teitler is a senior analyst at TAG Cyber where she collaborates with security product companies on market messaging, positioning, and strategy. In previous roles, she has managed, written, and published content for two research firms, a cybersecurity events company, and a security software vendor. Katie is a co-author of “Zero Trust Security for Dummies.”

Native Browser Isolation as an Extension | TAG Cyber

On Friday, April 3rd 2020, banks across the US started accepting Payroll Protection Program applications(PPP), allowing companies to borrow money during the COVID-19/Coronavirus crisis. The loan originates from the passing of the CARES act, which provides support for businesses impacted by the global pandemic. For more information on the PPP visit the SBA website.

With the launch of these loans, banks are struggling to create the infrastructure and process needed to handle these applications. The SBA loan applications are urgent, as they are first come, first serve. On the first day of the launch, Bank of America received 177,000 applications and many other institutions were having their doors beaten down with questions from inquiring companies.

This urgency and lack of infrastructure leads to people seek answers to help themselves if their bank isn't responding quickly enough. That’s the perfect breeding ground for social engineering & phishing attacks.

It’s unfortunate that during these difficult times, there has been a steep increase in phishing attacks; starting with offers of a vaccine and now, attacks targeting businesses that are in desperate need of capital.

Our product, Airlock has discovered a number of these malicious sites in the wild targeting companies searching for the easiest and quickest method to get their application in to the SBA. Airlock immediately marked these sites as malicious while sending out notifications to our business customers with the “breadcrumbs” of the attack - a timeline of where the user browsed prior to arriving on the phishing page. This helps in understanding their origin and if the victim was targeted or simply seeking a solution.

If you’re a business or individual looking for PPP or other SBA loans, please consider contacting your bank directly and don’t use search engines to identify an easier alternative. If you must, confirm that URL and the source is 100% credible and trusted.

If you’re interested in keeping yourself and your business safe from malicious sites trying to steal information, reach out to rick@apozy.com or sign up at https://www.apozy.com. Apozy Airlock is free for companies feeling the impact of COVID-19/Coronavirus.

As a business owner, you have much to think about these days, especially with some or all of your staff working from home due to the spread of the coronavirus. That work-from-home reality generates new cybercrime concerns, so it's crucial to make your systems as secure as possible. By following a checklist of steps you can take to ensure your off-site workforce is productive and secure, you can turn your attention to maintaining your company's equilibrium in these challenging times. You can start the process by installing the Apozy Airlock web browser extension, offered for free to companies affected by the COVID-19 virus.

For many companies, the 'new normal' created by the spread of the COVID-19 virus means having some or all of their employees working from home. The transition presents several challenges to corporate leadership, the biggest being the cybersecurity threat that arises when all those personal computers connect into the company's data stores and digital systems. Removing the worker from the office also removes them from the safety and security processes that keep company data and systems secure.

The home computer adds another complexity to the BYOD trend - Bring Your Own Device. The rise of mobility and hand-held computing devices allows many workers to conduct work projects on their personal devices. However, statistics indicate that as many as 85% of all mobile devices have no security protections at all, so they act as open portals to cyber thieves. Like those mobile devices, many home computers also lack the security procedures and protocols that are ubiquitous in today's business community, which also makes them easy targets.

Compounding the work-from-home challenge is the fact that over 40% of all cybersecurity incidents come from intentional or inadvertent employee activities. That percentage may rise in companies where workers are now working from home, unsupervised and alone.

So how do you protect your company, its contracts, and its consumers from the challenges posed by your newly established at-home workforce? A good start is to protect the web browsers through which that workforce connects to the Internet and your corporate computing systems.

Web browsers are arguably the most used portal for Internet access; they are accessible from any device, they facilitate quick and easy web cruising, and they contain vast quantities of information for future user reference. There are several browser options - Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer are the most popular - and each comes with a myriad of options, services, and features to enhance that computing experience. It is because of their popularity that Web browsers are also the most common portal through which cyber thieves gain access to company information: so many people access them to go about their daily lives, both at work and home. Browser data is rich with public, private, personal, and confidential information that makes it enticing to cyber thieves. While the volume and type of data they seek are almost infinite, most cybercriminals will look for information related to these targets:

A listing of visited websites, including their URL's, page names, and even a date and time stamp declaring when the site was accessed last;

All saved login information. With login information, the thieves can access all the computer owner's accounts, and perhaps even those of your company.

HTTP cookies, which are tiny data bits placed on a computer's hard drive by the owners of visited sites. Cookies share user browsing data with their owners. "LocalStorage" is an updated form of cookie that stores more data locally - on the computer's hard drive, making it easier to access and steal.

Autofill programming fills in all the blanks in commonly used web-based forms, so users don't have to. That data, too, sits on the hard drive, ready to be stolen.

Thieves can use browser data to identify when, when, how often, and what users are searching for, including the businesses they shop at, the products they buy, and in some cases, even the prices they pay. The data can also reveal email addresses, page titles, and downloads, all of which provide even more in-depth insights into the user's intentions and capabilities. When those users are also accessing business files and records through their home browser, the browser is collecting that information, too. Without appropriate filters or other cybersecurity layers, thieves can make off with the confidential information of both the at-home worker and their employer.

Apozy Airlock is Designed to Foil Browser Intrusions

Since 2014, Apozy has been working to ease access to clean, safe information. Using an AI-powered browser defense platform, Apozy Airlock uses a petabyte-scaled database of cyber threat indicators to analyze the websites that users are viewing, looking for common cyber intrusion tactics, including Phishing (emails that, when opened, unleash malware into the user's system), DDOS attacks (a distributed denial of service that freezes the function of entire networks), and malware (including spyware, worms, and viruses).

When an employee seeks access to a compromised website through the browser, Apozy Airlock isolates that threatening website and converts it into 'read-only' web pages. Workers can then get the information they need - or determine it isn't available - without opening an access to the corporation's databanks.

Apozy Airlock offers a variety of digital security supports:

It analyzes and alerts you to browsing events that may lead to a security incident, including the precise URL and the type of threat that exists there. With that information readily available, your team can address the problem before damage can occur and take steps to avoid the challenge in the future.

It adds each security incident to your company's 'cybersecurity playbook,' so you can share it with other systems or integrate it with proprietary apps to prevent a problem in the future.

The web browser extension links seamlessly to every browser with just one click.

It provides a secure gateway behind your corporate firewall, and that covers your entire network.

Management controls deployment using Google Admin, Group Policies, or User Enrollment to attach the extension to every authorized corporate browser.

In most cases, full organization-wide implementation takes less than one minute.

Checklist: Basic Security Precautions for Remote Workers

Once the Airlock is in place, you'll still want to set data security standards in place for your at-home workers. These best practices cover three main domains for digital security: technical, human resources, and legal. They will help you address the security challenges posed by your new at-home labor force:

At a minimum, educate your employees about the need for data and computing security:

Enable double authentication on all their devices.

Ask them to turn off the 'auto-connect' function on their devices.

Prohibit the use of any 'free wifi' services they may encounter.

Ask them to limit their work time to when they are physically in their homes. Even with the stay-at-home standard, some may elect to visit family members or friends while the situation evolves.

Require them to log out of every device after every use.

If possible, let your workers take their company tech assets home with them, which will preserve as much as possible your existing security systems.

If that's not possible, require your workers to apply the highest possible security systems to all of their 'endpoints' - their personal computers, laptops, and mobile devices.

Mandate that all workers, regardless of their location, use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for all corporate activities and across all corporate networks.

If possible, apply Network Access Controls (NAC) across your systems to validate users and devices, and to reject access to unsecured machines.

Protect your corporate data with Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools.

Employ encryption at every point in your systems, including both resting and in-transit data, email services, and application access procedures.

At every opportunity, review and reinforce with all your workforce the technical best practices listed above.

Your specific situation may also call for extra layers of protection over your corporate databanks and bases, such as additional authentication and access protocols. These can inhibit workers who may have less than honorable ideas about how to use their time out of the office.

If your company manages highly sensitive or secretive data, you may have to make even more modifications to your security systems to ensure they can continue to access the data they need.

Despite the community chaos, your organization probably still has contracts and agreements it must honor, as well as industrial standards that it must always follow.

Review all contracts for terms that may be affected by an at-home workforce, such as liability and indemnification clauses. Errors or breaches that occur during this time may nullify the agreement or shift liability to your enterprise.

Review your corporate insurance policies, too, to determine the extent of cybersecurity coverage and exclusions.

The coronavirus is causing millions of workers to work from home, which is undoubtedly attracting the attention of thousands of global cyber thieves looking to exploit the corporate vulnerabilities that those workers will almost certainly expose. The Apozy Airlock web browser extension will prevent your company from becoming a victim of the impending wave of cybercrime, and it's available for free to companies impacted by COVID-19.

Pam Sornson writes about technology, the law, parenting, and the environment, among many other subjects. Her legal background supports her comprehensive analytical skills and her compassion for humanity helps her to connect with people on every level.

Coronavirus Remote Work Cybersecurity Checklist

Internet browser security is changing — and fast. In the last few weeks, internet users in the United States noticed that Firefox now defaults to something called DNS-over-HTTPS or DoH , for short. Google Chrome and other browsers might follow suit.

DoH is a relatively new security protocol that improves privacy by hiding domain name lookups from someone nefarious on public WiFi, local networks, and even your ISP. When enabled, DoH ensures that your ISP can't collect and then sell all the personal info that's related to your browsing behavior.

Here's everything you wanted to know about DoH but were too afraid to ask.

In recent years, there has been a general shift toward encryption on the internet. Most browsers use HTTPS encryption, and Google Chrome marks sites that still use the old HTTP standard as "not secure." However, there's an even newer technology out there, and it's called DoH. Currently, you can find it as an option in Google Chrome and the default in Firefox.

"This encryption ensures that no one can tamper with a web page while you're viewing it or snoop on what you're doing online," says HowToGeek. "For example, if you connect to Wikipedia.org, the network operator — whether that's a business's public Wi-Fi hotspot or your ISP — can only see that you're connected to wikipedia.org. They can't see which article you're reading, and they can't modify a Wikipedia article in transit."

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